Last Night's Dream

As far as I can tell and remember, all of the following was one stretch of dream, though I don't remember how the first part transitioned to the rest. There was something before what I have written here that led into it, but I can't remember enough details to mention it.

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 On an alien planet with Anita, Elvendrums, and some of the Next Generation crew of the Enterprise, it's cold, and I use my cloak to keep people covered and warm, making reference to the fact that I'd used it to keep Anita and myself warm in KC at the renfaire, so it was good enough to keep everyone warm here.

 In a school, not because I'm one of the students but to "register" my proficiency with blunt weaponry, such as warhammers. Either by myself, or only with Anita now. One of the students accidentally jabs me in the shoulder near the neck instead of on the upper arm when trying to do a "friendly punch" greeting. I get irritated, possibly moreso because he didn't apologize before going off into a classroom. One of the teachers nearby asks what happened, and I explain but more or less brush it off.

 At a park, with swingset. There's some sort of water toy there, too. Someone I know, possibly one of the teachers at the school but a friendly figure regardless, asks if I can go get her and the person she's with (and presumably myself as well) some drinks, fruit punch. I start walking off (by myself) towards where I thought was a nearby place to purchase them, but it doesn't look right, so I turn around, head other way, still isn't right, so I stop, look around, head off in the direction it should be. Entering buildings which I thought had multiple eateries, end up having only one, they don't sell what I'm looking for (first asked for fruit soda, then pink lemonade, before remembering it was fruit punch). The restaurant has some kind of odd promotion/gimmick going where there's a $20 bill laying on the steps, and someone asks over intercom who dropped it there, but no one is claiming it - had the thought in-dream that maybe the longer it stayed there, the larger some payout would be. I went down the stairs, which are wide and rather opulent, to leave the restaurant (floating/sliding down rather than walking). I'm having trouble remembering, now, whether there were other stairs on my way in or through.

 Leaving restaurant, still trying to find place with fruit punch. Looks like an old-town shopping district, but larger, maybe similar to HP Diagon Alley. I make the comment that I need to find the right alley to reach the main street. My mind makes the connection that this place is like a labyrinth when a spectral image of Jareth appears in the next "aisle," which I hadn't noticed existed (when I entered my "aisle" it had been an alleyway between two buildings). I start to address the spectral image, something which my dream-self thinks Jareth may not have expected - maybe I wasn't supposed to be able to see him. He claims that this is his dream, which I reject. As I'm walking back to round the "alley" into the next aisle, I state instead that it is our dream. "You opened your gates to me, Jareth. I call you." At which point he solidifies, stating. "I am here."

 I ask him why he is preventing/impeding my progress. He makes some remark about my purpose here being to seek the Holy Grail, and starts taunting to the effect of, "You don't actually think it's a cup, do you?" I respond, "As if." (Post-dream, as I'm writing this, realize that I had actually been seeking drinks in the dream, which would have been in cups.) We start talking about what the grail actually is, and I make some clarifying remark about some early Christians knowing the truth despite modern ones believing otherwise. Jareth asks me to explain the nature of intellect and belief (not sure if "belief" was the actual word, may have been "spirituality" or something else). I quip, "That's kind of a fuzzy topic. So I imagine it's rather hairy." This earns a laugh. Then I continue with "I think that the intellect and (belief) are what (go/we lose) when we... die. I think they comprise the soul. At least, that's what I believe."

 The aisles we've been walking down, I've noticed, have shelves, like a thrift store. Jareth picks something up from one of the shelves, it looks like a couple pieces of fried chicken (one was definitely a leg) and a container for it of some sort (cone-shaped?) which may have had the Popeye's logo, and makes a comment about it being a shame (possibly that someone dropped or didn't finish it) before offering it to me. I think I politely declined, or was about to, when I woke up. Post-dream, it occurs to me that the items on the shelves may have been a correlation to the soul-items from A Dirty Job, in which case was Jareth offering me a soul or was he offering a receptacle which would hold mine? I got the feeling that the reason the chicken had been (at least mostly) untouched is because the person who had it before died, and that's why I was reluctant to take it.

Tolerating Distractions

Once again, enlightenment from another blog's comments.  Normally when I read the comments on internet articles and blogs, I'm left with disappointment over the state of humanity, so this is a welcome change of pace.

I recently followed a few gaming blogs on G+, and through that stumbled across this article regarding gamers who don't pay strict attention at the table.  Knitting at the table is kind of awesome, and is less distracting (for the other players) than my backpacker.  I know one GM who sometimes crochets while running the game, when the players are planning things out and so on.  In most cases, it is as easy to pick up and put down as anything else and is productive to boot.  I'm fairly lenient when it comes to distracted gamers, though I'll admit to some of the typical insecurities regarding whether or not the person is invested in the game, and whose fault that may be if they aren't.  However, my wife and I have discussed at various times her envy-inducing multitasking abilities, so usually I'm able to keep in mind that even if she doesn't appear to be paying attention physically, her mind is still focused on the game.  It was nice, then, to see this comment from "dfjdejulio":

So, on the “knitting while playing tabletop games” thing, I might be able to give a little perspective on why some people react so negatively to it.

My spouse does this sort of thing. I do not.

I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. My spouse has some ADHD-like symptoms but has never gotten a diagnosis. Right around the time of my diagnosis, I studied up on the condition, reading a lot of books and some articles from medical journals and stuff.

Some people with ADHD cannot concentrate well *if* more than one thing is going on. Other people with ADHD cannot concentrate well *unless* more than one thing is going on.

(What *seems* to be going on is, when the primary activity isn’t stimulating enough to occupy every last drop of their attention, they can “bleed off” some of the excess need-for-stimulation via secondary activities. If they’re blocked from doing this it gets frustrating and they fidget and daydream and stuff and just can’t focus.)

Whether she actually has ADHD or not, the latter certainly describes my spouse. She’s even got empirical data to back this up — when she started studying and doing homework with the TV *on*, her grades went *up*, and that correlation remained in place from high school through grad school. It was an objectively measurable effect, not just a subjective experience.

I, on the other hand, am the sort who can’t concentrate if anything else is going on.

Her behavior drove me *nuts* until I understood it, because if *I* had been behaving that way, well, it would have meant that I cared so little for the game that I had no intention of participating in it. But she needed the extra distraction in order to participate. What would have been a display of contempt from me was an accommodation in order to remain involved from her.

(Similarly, when we’re ordering pizza, I have to either pause or mute the TV, because otherwise I often can’t even read the pizza menu — my ability to multitask is *that* poor. This drove *her* nuts until she understood my nature better.)

I don't have ADHD (or at least, have never been diagnosed with it), but this still resonates with me very strongly.  I cannot multitask well at all.  If I open up a browser window while playing on a MUD, there's a good chance I'll get focused on whatever is in the browser and forget that I'm still logged into a game underneath it.  If there is a television within my field of vision, I have difficulty focusing on anything else in the room, whether it's visual or aural.  Trying to use multiple devices with multiple screens, something becoming iconic in the world of geeks and gaming, is simply beyond me.  I can listen to music while doing something else, but anything visual typically ends up derailing me.

My wife, on the other hand, typically has about twenty browser tabs open and is connected to the MUD while doing her college coursework, with the television on.  It makes me jealous, and also sometimes makes it difficult for me to understand comments that she makes because I wasn't paying attention to whatever source spurred the comment.  But, she cannot deal with having a lot of noise, or multiple sources of aural input, especially if she's trying to talk.  Music playing while the television is on ends up being too chaotic and cacophonous.  Sometimes just music on the radio is too much - she focuses better with silence.

So, I can handle background noise but not background visuals, while she can deal with visuals but not noise. There are exceptions on both sides, but this is the typical situation.

Both my wife and our friend Jonathan use their laptops to store character sheets for my game.  It's a lot harder to lose a laptop than a piece of paper or even a folder, and digital files are much easier to edit (and don't suffer from eraser marks).  Most of my game rules and information is also kept on my computer, though I try to only open it up on an as-needed basis.  So I have come to expect a certain level of distraction during my games, and for the most part I've built up a tolerance and I'm okay with it.  I have my limits as well, but it doesn't come up often because I know that it's mostly just satisfying the need/urge to fidget when the player's character isn't in the spotlight.

When I'm a player, though, rather than a GM, I use paper character sheets, and limit my "distractions" to random dice rolling and fiddling around on the guitar if there's no other music playing.  That's how I was raised, in gaming, so that's how I feel comfortable doing it.

Mad RP Skillz

   One of the people I follow on G+ linked to this livejournal post by Monte Cook, which started me thinking about things, but it wasn't until I read one of the comments on the post by Bryan Schuder that things started clicking for me. He wrote:

In one of my gaming groups, we had an interesting contrast that occurred that exemplifies why more constraint leads to constraint thought.

One GM started out the campaign in DnD 2nd Edtion, took it to 3.5, and then finally Pathfinder. To give him a break during the big changes and reworkings, I'd get to GM and prototype my game system and setting. My system is designed to be loose and admits to have gaps in coverage, but with the understanding that those are taken care of by things outside the core rules (game master or setting specific rulings). It was a blast, my players got to play all kinds of crazy characters (even players with no real combat skills that actually saved the day many, many times), do wild things (nano-tech infested player hijacks a pre-fall robot to distract and wrestle another robot infested with extra-dimensional bacteria.. while all the other players are trying to gun it down), and they felt their creativity would be greatly rewarded. (You know that hijacked pre-fall robot? They took it with them. It has it's own trailer. They used it to loot plasma cannons off of the turrets they disabled.) I'm an on-the-fly GM, so stick with outlines and let the players fill in the rest.

The interesting part came when we switched back to the other GM's campaign. Finally, in a discussion about tactics, the GM spouted, "Why don't you do crazy stuff in my game like you do in his game?" A player responded, "Well, in DnD there's all these rules and we try to do crazy cool stuff and it never works or we just can't do it." While I had a grin on my face, that statement stuck with me.

If your rules prevent anything outside their explicit domain from happening, players are going to naturally trend towards sticking within them. It's simple game theory; if no reward is had for an action, it will occur with decreasing frequency. Another situation came when our group tried out grid combat. While it allowed everything to be laid out well, our groups tendencies towards cool, creative ideas decreased quite rapidly. This bothered the GM and so we got rid of exact dimensions combat. After some testing, he went with the "not-to-scale minimap" setup. Allows the group to understand the layout, but not feel they are constrained to it any arbitrary movement rules. The creativity came back and all was good.

   First off, this helps me to realize that it might be okay to not have everything accounted for in the rules. My focus on playtesting was spurred by concerns about powergamers, rules lawyers, and just generally those people who would try to take advantage of any system, no matter how well designed. But honestly, the chances of me ever publishing whatever system I end up with are slim at best, and I don't see my playerbase growing at any point in the near future, so chances are good I can stop worrying about playtesting and just start playing.

   Secondly, it was nice to see that my decision to try and minimize any rules based on movement and grid-style tactics is not necessarily a terrible one. I still enjoy seeing a layout, and I still enjoy having miniatures as character and monster representations, but trying to lock down how fast or far someone can move tends to only slow combat down, and if combat isn't the primary focus of the game then that seems to be a mistake. 

   Thirdly, while reading through this I was reminded of skill systems in both D&D and Shadowrun, and how the GM's I've played under have handled skill resolution in the past. One thing that really frustrated me (as well as other players) at the Tuesday Game(tm) Shadowrun sessions was that we, the players, were more or less limited to our own experiences and personal strong points in designing characters to play. The GM ran most non-combat skills solely through RP, whether it was a social skill in trying to bluff or negotiate, checking for traps on a closed entryway, even disabling those traps. This depended on the player having knowledge that the character should have had, or been trained for, and it meant you were pretty much incapable if you didn't have player knowledge of how to do these things. If it was combat, or a skill the GM didn't have a personal basis for judgment on, you could just roll the dice.

   Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun at the games, and in Shadowrun, but often I would end up feeling like the points I would put into skills were wasted. Most often I played a Face/Negotiator type character, and the points I put into social skills meant I didn't have some of the machine, vehicle, or combat skills that others did. So when it came time for combat, I'd get one pistol shot and had to hope it would hit, as opposed to two or three initiative passes with machine guns or heavy artillery. Even if I took the cinematic route in combat, it still meant I'd maybe put down one baddie in the entire battle. Yet the sacrifice to my combat abilities felt meaningless, because not once did I ever pick up the dice to roll a social skill, despite having amazing dicepools in them. The only times my character would shine were at the beginning and end of a run, when the team had to meet with the contact to get the job and when we got paid, and maybe an occasional social infiltration.

   Here's an anecdotal example: The proverbial poo has hit the fan, with the party down on the docks outside a warehouse. Enemy targets are everywhere, including a helicopter. Police forces are on the way, but the gates to the dock are shut and locked. Since my character can't do anything meaningful in combat anyway, I pull back and hustle to the gatehouse to find the key and unlock the gate. The GM rules it will take me X rounds to get to the gatehouse, so I'm investing a lot of time and focus into this action while everyone else is making with the fireworks. I get to the gatehouse, grab the key, and start running for the gate. One of the party members with a heavy gun of some kind manages to disable the enemy helicopter. I reach the gate just as the helicopter crash lands into it, taking the gate down entirely. I'm left standing there, key in hand, having wasted all that time doing less than nothing, rather than even the next-to-nothing I'd have done if I'd stayed in combat with my pistol. I was so invested in trying to do the thing that was seen as most helpful to the situation, that I was unable to come up with alternative methods of involving myself in the scenario which might have had more ultimate effect.

   The image of my character standing there with the key in hand, staring dumbfounded at the now destroyed gate, burned itself into the minds of the players there, and everyone else got a big laugh. I grinned and bore it, then, but it has always bothered me. I had accepted the fact my character was more useful in doing this menial task than in trying to fight, and then was essentially told that no matter what I tried to do, my character's actions were entirely meaningless to the scenario. Thinking on that, and looking back now, I have to wonder how much any of the characters' actions in those runs made any difference, whether we actually made a difference to how things went or whether we were all just railroaded through the storyboards in the GM's head.

   This is one of the things that I keep in mind when I think about skill systems, and one of the reasons I lean towards a "tight rules" mentality when working out the mechanics of those skills.  If my players want to roleplay out a situation, that's great.  I would definitely give a bonus to their skill check if I thought they did a good job.  But basing the entire result on their RP, and ignoring whatever bonus they actually have to the skill, means that you never actually end up with people roleplaying their characters.  Instead, they end up just playing themselves, because that's the only way to progress.