(Yes, Video Games are fine)
I keep having discussion with my Political Science Professor and my Economics Professor about things I've learned in Games (Video or pen and paper) and how they apply to real life.
Some of them:
-In MTG *When I learned), you had essentially a 60 card limit, so, if the cards you wanted to add were more than that number, you had to make trade offs, and choose between them. This helped me learn: Scarcity and Opportunity Cost
-MMO's helped me learn to how to math out the most optimal use of my "resources", and how to get the most bang for my buck with the least buck spent. This helped me learn: Same as before, add in Supply and Demand and more.
-In Pathfinder/DnD/RPing in general I learned exactly how important communication is in general. Most conflicts come from lack of communication, most can be solved through communication. Most, but not all.
There's more, but that's good for now, what have games taught YOU? :D
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That my friends are weird.
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Magic (or in the Real World Case: Technology) cannot solve all of our problems. Some just take hard work and others can't be solved and you just have to live with them.
Getting different personalities to work together is like trying to herd cats.
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Things I've learned from gaming?
The world does not have to conform to your desires. The GM, whoever that is in life, is not beholden to your vision for yourself. Nor are you beholden to some unseen architect.
Good is not defined by a book or a title; or limited by a mark on a character sheet. It is defined by actions.
Evil is not a cardboard caricature. It is much more dynamic than that.
Luck hates me and so do dice.
Have fun.
Oh, go ahead and dump Charisma. Don't dump Will. Unless you like hitting your team mates...
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The only people who really care about your backstory are looking for hooks to hang plots on.
Sometimes, you have too much baggage to ride a railroad.
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A list of vocabulary words that has never failed to amaze my employers, educators, and colleagues.
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That someone you agree with on every issue of substance, and are closer to than anyone else in the world will still get into a 90-minute screaming match about the interpretation of a three-word phrase in a rulebook.
The lesson there is that differences of opinion, no matter how strongly or dearly held, should not interfere with friendship.
This is also a lesson we need to remember on Facebook.
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Preparation is important, but adaptability is vital.
The following thread might interest you:
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Some people just don't listen, even when you know (from previous experience) what the outcome of their actions are going to be; and then they will get angry with you for not warning them, even after you went to great lengths to do so.
Never split the party. It will not save time, and something bad always happens to the other guys.
Doing the right thing is not always rewarded.
Hard work and sacrifice are necessary to achieve anything worthwhile.
Don't skim the rules. You WILL miss something important.
A lot of people have absolutely zero idea what they are and are not good at.
That someone you agree with on every issue of substance, and are closer to than anyone else in the world will still get into a 90-minute screaming match about the interpretation of a three-word phrase in a rulebook.
The lesson there is that differences of opinion, no matter how strongly or dearly held, should not interfere with friendship.
This is also a lesson we need to remember on Facebook.
I have no problem with the difference of opinion. I have a problem with the screaming match.
If you have to behave like a 6 year old, you can do it without me. Doesn't matter if it is customer, employer, friend, spouse, or family. That isn't necessary or helpful and there is no reason for me to put up with it.
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Oh, go ahead and dump Charisma. Don't dump Will. Unless you like hitting your team mates...Charisma makes a huge difference in real life.
Unfortunately, I dumped the stat.
Only to some people. Some people just don't care how you look as long as you behave civilly for the most part.
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On a serious side, it introduced me to the Egyptian pantheon of gods and helped foster my current interest in all things ancient Middle East. It boosted my already expansive vocabulary, it taught me the value of teamwork and to question what is good and evil. It also made me weird friends who've been with me for 30 years.
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On a serious side, it introduced me to the Egyptian pantheon of gods and helped foster my current interest in all things ancient Middle East. It boosted my already expansive vocabulary, it taught me the value of teamwork and to question what is good and evil. It also made me weird friends who've been with me for 30 years.
Heh, I was a mythoholic (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc) WAY before I ever got into gaming.
I had an interest in it, but had been exposed mostly to Roman and Greek. I knew very little, if anything, about the Middle East/Mesopotamian beliefs. I eagerly begin to study them and it's become more and more fascinating.
And in the last few years www.pantheon.org has become a great site for gaming inspiration.
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Other things I've learned:
Storytelling, writing and acting.
I frequently let my characters grow beyond what I had originally intended, now.
My CG Slayer "Bounty Hunter" (Profession, not archetype) is well on her way to being a Champion of a new found faith, or a Freedom Fighter, or both.
I never would have allowed that degree of improve or character growth into my writing before that, but now? Oh yeah, definitely doing so.
This will hopefully make my writing seem more natural, hopefully. XD
And second all the "I met my friends through this" comments.
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I learned that I love dense technical writing. After all, these books are hundreds of pages of system rules, and achieving system mastery to be able to determine optimizations...that's something people usually get paid for.
I have no problem with the difference of opinion. I have a problem with the screaming match.If you have to behave like a 6 year old, you can do it without me. Doesn't matter if it is customer, employer, friend, spouse, or family. That isn't necessary or helpful and there is no reason for me to put up with it.
True, and I exaggerate with the screaming part, especially since it was in a chat, but it did get quite heated.
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No plan survives contact with other people.
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... and that doesn't make it a bad plan.
True, and I exaggerate with the screaming part, especially since it was in a chat, but it did get quite heated.
I have no problem with the difference of opinion. I have a problem with the screaming match.If you have to behave like a 6 year old, you can do it without me. Doesn't matter if it is customer, employer, friend, spouse, or family. That isn't necessary or helpful and there is no reason for me to put up with it.
I've seen or been involved with some that did become a literal screaming match. People standing up and yelling at each other while pounding on the table or wall.
Those are people I won't associate with anymore.
I have never gotten into a screaming match. I usually break down in tears before I get that angry.
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Never give in even when the odds are stacked against you.
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I have never once in all my 29 years of gaming seen anyone get into a screaming match table pounding, wall hitting, or table flipping. I've seen disagreements and people get a bit heated over something, but stories about the former just boggle my mind.
EDIT: I just remembered a screaming match between some Chinese kids at a local FLGS during a Yu-Gi-Oh game. Cards were flying everywhere.
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Never cross a Sicilian when death is on the line.. Oh, wait... That was a movie not an RPG...
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People who talk the most about things like "group cohesion" and "being a team player" are the most likely ones to cause problems and behave in ways that would even make such things an issue.
By contrast, the best leaders don't try to impose order or tell people what to do - they trust their fellows to know how to do what they do best, and do it.
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Strive for excellence, set an example, and under no circumstances permit the lowest common denominator to be the ones shaping your opinions.
We are not all equals in this world. For whatever reason, some people are simply better than other people. There is no easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff, however, and every attempt to find an efficient and reliable way to do so has resulted in horrific failure. The spark of superiority is, for all practical purposes, random, and this is why people must be judged as individuals.
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Well, I’m not real good at the esoteric things. But I do have examples of learning concrete real world skills.
Some years back, both of my boys were having trouble in school. Though they are both reasonably intelligent, they were at the bottom of their respective classes in reading, spelling, and mathematics. One has an actual learning disability that makes reading very difficult and slow. The other just really didn’t try. I think because he was reading as well as his older brother who obviously wasn’t getting in trouble for it.
I got them interested in Magic The Gathering card game (including a computer version that let them play against the AI all they wanted). Well, to play that game you have to read and understand the card then add and subtract all those numbers. Then decide what will well work together in a deck.
In one game there is more reading and basic math than in any 2 school lessons that we would have to fight all night to get them to complete. Yes, eventually they would get the cards memorized. But that is also a good skill. Didn’t bother me at all. Every so often I’d get them a new booster back that they would have to understand then figure out how to incorporate in their decks.
After a couple months when they had that well in hand. I introduced them to DnD 3.0 books I still had lying around (I wasn’t in a gaming group at that time). They loved it. There’s tons more crap to read, understand, consider, add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc… than in any card game.
“Dad, my ranger’s got a bunch of gold but not enough for a better bow. What can he buy to be better at shooting and stuff? Well, maybe look at a wand of a ranger spell that will help like Cat’s Grace. They can really use that? What’s that do? How much does it cost? I don’t remember exactly off the top of my head, go look it up in the players handbook.”
(Of course I did remember, but I wanted him to check it.) Sure I had to help him with a bunch of words and some math, but for the next couple of hours he worked over the ranger spell list, what the spells did, how it might help him, and how much it cost. Found he couldn’t afford what he wanted. I suggested a partially charged wand might be found and more affordable. Then more time was spent figuring how much he could afford and if he wanted to spend all that.
It was quite literally almost an entire evening of general studying for his 3 most difficult classes. He didn’t realize it and loved every minute of it.
A couple months later their teachers asked us what we had done with the boys. In less than a semester they had gone from the very bottom of the class (with my wife and I pulling out our hair in frustration) to the top fourth of the class. I said “I got them interested in a fun game that has a heavy dictionary’s worth of rules.” They were shocked. They were afraid my wife and I had them in some sort of facist style boot camp studying all night every night. I answered, “Nope they got themselves studying all night every night and they don’t even know it.”
Their vocabulary is a bit skewed shall we say. But all through college they had instructors that would be surprised at some of the words they knew and used correctly in normal conversation. Adults don't expect a 4th grader to use words and phrase like pantheon, exclusion, area of affect, rebuke, dimension, non-combatant, ragnarok, etc... Especially not to use them correctly.
They were quicker and more accurate on their basic math than a math major. You know the same math you use to figure out whether this can of peanut butter on sale is a better buy than the two-pack.
At an age were most of their class mates were reading comic books they started reading the hobbit. Because I said it was written kinda like a long DnD adventure. Then we got in a big hours long discussion of how it wasn't really like a DnD adventure because X. Sounds to me like a comparative literary evaluation of a several hundred page novel when their class mates were doing 1/2 page book reports on a 50 page kids book.
It is one of my parenting decision that I am most proud of. And I almost didn’t do it because I was initially afraid if they really liked MtG, they would do that instead of studying. I finally agreed to it as a reward for something I don't now remember. Probably for passing a spelling test or something like that.
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Never give in even when the odds are stacked against you.
Yeah, because giving in won't help. That's the time to run away.
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Run away Brave Sir Robin!
Communication and management (including time and people) skills.
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Run away, because the next time, you can choose the battlefield, be buffed, and bring allies.
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People who talk the most about things like "group cohesion" and "being a team player" are the most likely ones to cause problems and behave in ways that would even make such things an issue.
I've noticed that too. They seem to mean "Be a team player but I'm captain of the team so do what I say. Any other opinions will be considered mutiny and you will be labled a troublemaker and rebel who is bad for the game.".
Run away, because the next time, you can choose the battlefield, be buffed, and bring allies.
That's right! He who turns and runs away...
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Run away, because the next time, you can choose the battlefield, be buffed, and bring allies.That's right! He who turns and runs away...
** spoiler omitted **
Only if they forget to run in zig zag patterns...
Well, I’m not real good at the esoteric things. But I do have examples of learning concrete real world skills...
If this had been a contest, that would have won.
As it is, you and your family still won. :D
A great many Jeopardy! answers.
Mostly though, I use the role play aspects of Pathfinder to aid teaching social skills to adolescents with autism.
This too.
Seething with silent fury is far better then expressing it, because expressing disapproval of another player may result in you getting kicked.
Really? It's hard to snap when you've always been broken.
^_^