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Israeli Army Frowns on D&D
Big Rob found us a gem of a story about the Israeli Army frowning on D&D players. Apparently '18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.' I especially enjoyed the pictures of D&D players with swords, as generally the only thing in my hand during D&D is soda and/or swiss cake rolls.
I'm thinking that a few generals should meet up with Jack Chick and have a good long discussion about the evils of role playing.
I like D&D. But after seeing some of those pics (before the slashdot effect), I frown on it too!
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Heck, you'd think they'd get a leg up for it--for example, as D&D precludes any and all contact with females, they run no risk of sexual transgression whatsoever!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
My level 12 Galil with plumbum bullets strike down the level 4 suicide bomber. 100EXP and 12GP. :D
Wait 'til you hear what they do to recruits who admit they read Slashdot!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Think about it. D&D attracts imaginitive players who are able to think for themselves. Now does that seem like people you want in your Army? I ship out to Marine boot camp Aug. 1st and people have told me over and over again that when I get there...I shouldn't stand out. D&D players are different...and normally very smart. In an army you want drones who can think for themselves but will never question orders. Why do you think the great dictators killed teachers???
Judging from the article, it seems that the IDF is frowning upon LARPers, not D&Ders per se.
At least, that's what I get from all the pictures and quotations like "[soon] hundreds of fans are expected to meet in a forest in the southern part of Israel for a two-day game of pure fantasy."
Players are always trying to peek behind the DM's screen so they can see what's coming up next. Cheating on the dice rolls, making up munchkin characters, sneaking a look at the monster manual, etc. Untrustworthy, the whole lot of em.
Is a bomb an "edged weapon"? Maybe the IDF just doesn't want clerics to know they have a better chance "to hit" with a guided missile than with a war hammer, mace or morningstar.
--
make install -not war
but if IDF says that people who indulge in fantasy games, as a statistical group, have personality traits that make them a lower security risk, then I am inclined to believe them.
"They're really smart. They must know what they're talking about."
One possible characteristic not mentioned in TFA was: People who role-play might be more inclined to game the system - definitely not a desirable personality trait to have in personnel deployed in sensitive positions.
WTF? "Game the system"? If you play D&D you realize that "gaming the system" gets you in Shitsville with the game referee (the much maligned "Dungeon Master"). So if anything, D&D players are LESS inclined to "game the system".
I can't decide if you're an innocent clueless asshat or a troll. And I'm a fairly discerning reader. So hats off to you!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
haha... your funny. This is nothing more then ignorance.
The numbers they cite where pointless. How many people would not qualify for high clearence if ALL recruits went to see the psychiatrist? who knows.
Another case where someone who does something different has to experience bigitory. Personally, I would welcome some good open studies on role-players. The few that where done(that I know of) never found in results worth reporting.
I say this as someone who has play role-playing games since '76*.
*I loath to put out how long I have been playing, because I hate those 'I've been playing for x years therefore I am right' types. I do feel that disclosure is neccessary for context in this discussion.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Something carried on 60 minutes (take with whativer size grain of salw you wish) One other thing you may wish to consider, few of the radical-right, orhtodox jews, serve in combat rolls in the IDF. Why? Because they're religious scholars and exempt from such duty. Yet, they are usually the ones howling the loudest about how it's their promised land and establish these lovely settlements in whatever speck of land the palestinians have left. You can usually tell, when you see some footage on TV, these people are heavily armed and ready to die for their house on the pile of rocks they claimed for themselves. They also tend to have larger families and are expected to control the majority of the electorate in a country where the armed forces are mostly composed of the secular or moderate jews.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm guessing that the IDF pshrinks found that D&D gamers tend to be more indivualistic. Being in the military is, by necessity, to be part of a team and the team has to come first, thereby presenting an inherant conflict of interest which may present itself at some very inopportune moment.
The biggest supporters for the state of Isreal are radical Christians, who see it as a neccessary precursor to the rapture.
:-)
Not that they'd neccessarily agree on much in one-on-one dialog
Bullshit. US military doctrine is built on soldiers who are flexible, able, and motivated. They don't want to see it in bootcamp, or expressed in ways deemed harmful to the unit. But they count on the fact they'll see it expressed in ways harmful to the enemy.
but if IDF says that people who indulge in fantasy games, as a statistical group, have personality traits that make them a lower security risk, then I am inclined to believe them.
There was a point in time where ECT in mental institutions was commonplace because it was endorsed by the American Psychology Association.
Today, we know that ECT only helps certain cases of clinical depression, and is used only in extreme cases when no other solution exists.
If you go further back with the same association, they used to perform labotamies. Do you think that practice is done today?
We need to be critical of experts. You cannot always agree with experts.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
before he hefted a beer keg over his head while all his frends chanted "ogre, ogre, ogre".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yeah, just think of what would happen if they ran at an enemy shouting "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!" and throwing balls of tinfoil...
Probably redundant by now, but oh well.
I was in a combat engineering group (ariborne!), had secret clearance, and was in charge of many men and equipment. My squad would often play D&D or other RPGs during down time. I think it helped us to think outside the box and come up with unique solutions to the problems presented to us during military exercises. In fact, it got so the whole platoon used to play Squad Leader (and other board games) along with my squad.
I think it has to do more with being creative and maybe anti-establishment. My squad (and I) would often ruffle brass when we did something that worked and worked well BUT wasn't by the book.
Oh well, that was 20 years ago. Now the US Army just wants bodies...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
I you want the rules, minus the character creation and some of the names of the items/spells/creatures, you can go to http://opengamingfoundation.org/ and download the 3.5 Edition SRD for no charge.
Actually, in one of my pre-recruitment interviews I told the interviewer that I read Slashdot and he was enthusiastic because he did too. :) That was an interview by technical people for a technical job, though, not the generic screening interviews that all Israeli teenagers do. (Recruitment is mandatory in Israel)
However, it should be noted that this was news to me, as I know quite a few people who played or still play D&D and other RPGs (I did, too) and served in highly classified jobs (Like myself).
Also, a prominent Israeli portal posted this caricature about the issue.
The guy on the dragon is saying (Very loosely translated) "I won't go anywhere but Golani", which is an elite unit.
And for the Slashdot crowd, the artist (Miki Mottes) was once the Sysop of a major Israeli BBS.
Then your DM was a weenie. One of my players tried to pull that once. He had a nice time watching TV while the rest played the rest of the session after he offed a character that wasn't "maxed out" to his satisfaction.
Had he done it a second time, he'd have found his seat taken come the 3rd session.
+1 Slashdotting Jack Chick
"Ynetnews" is written much like another "news" site I know: an outrageous headline, some carefully omitted facts, and a long enough article so that the majority (read: ADD) of readers get the "facts" the author intended, instead of the actual truth. That truth is buried at the bottom (probably to avoid litigation due to libel) of the article, natch.
According to the actual facts, if you say you play D&D (not "D and D," dumbass), you are "evaluated." Note that evaluation is not always performed by a Psychologist, ("usually" != always). And then
Note that they didn't say that the people who are evaluated are only the ones who admit to playing D&D; surely there are other reasons that could make one eligible for "evaluation." In fact, they could have ONLY ONE GUY who admitted to playing D&D, got evaluated and received a low security clearance, and their entire article could be true.
One last thing: a real news site's editors would stamp out something like
So my guess is "Ynetnews" subscribes to the same story editing that /. does: queue's getting big, this one sounds good, post it, is it a
dupe? who cares; just pass the gin 'n' juice.
Yeah, right.
Being in the military is, by necessity, to be part of a team and the team has to come first,
D&D, and most other role-playing games are exactly the embodiment of this. They are about teams achieving things, and it is not uncommon for one member to make a personal (or ultimate) sacrifice so that the team can achieve their goal. What they seldom have however, is a strict hierachy. This is a good thing in that the team learns to work together through willing co-operation and pooling creativity and knowledge. In practice, this is not how a [modern Western] military unit operates. Instead, they condition soldiers to obey orders and not question.
If there is any basis for the Israeli army's bias other than ignorance, then it is the creativity and ability to think away from the official point of view that is the "problem."
Just too many D&D'ers must ask themselves what is the alignment of my army, and come up with the answer Lawful Evil.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
"I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Shh ... you'll ruin his happy ignorance.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The article (at least the original one in Hebrew) doesn't talk about D&D but about LARPing (apparently it was mistranslated). Also these people are not automatically discarded but go through a psychological evaluation to decide whether they might pose a problem. The article mentions that about 50% of these people don't receive a security clearance, which means that 50% of them do get it. The problem with the other 50% being that they have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy (this decided after a thorough psychological evaluation and not just because the army doesn't like the games they play). Obviously the IDF believes that LARPing might be a symptom of a psychological problem but not necessarily the problem itself.
When Geiger counters are outlawed, only mutants will have Geiger counters
Simply not true. Our army and the soviet's army have a lot more in common than you think.
Hey, I'm not saying that the Red Army had a single strategy of "send wave after wave of cannon fodder until the enemy collapses" (though they did use this tactic on occasion in WW2). All I'm saying is that the Red Army did not value the same degree of "individual initiative" the US Army does. The fact of the matter is that the Red Army expected the officers and mid- to senior-grade NCOs to direct the actions of the privates and junior NCOs, and they were expected to obey. This is basically true of any army, but the Red Army took it to the extreme that (say) if their officers were killed, a motorized rifle platoon would often be at a loss to continue until they could get the company commander to assign an officer to them to relay orders. The divide between the "head" and the "body" was a lot wider, mostly because the filled the lower ranks with conscripts fulfilling their compulsory service.
Ask the Nazi's what they thought of the soviet army.
The Nazi high command mostly thought they were crazy hordes of untrained peasants, and that whatever skill they appeared to have in night fighting or camouflage was due to the "natural cunning of the slav" rather than training. Their asessment was, naturally, in error. My grandfather, a private in the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, did not concur with this sentiment.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I agree too. The military are well known for being rational.
In fact, why stop there?
Next, they should refuse to give you a license for having played Burnout
(They should also pay you in kmart vouchers if you admit to ever having gambled in your life)
I work with a retired Air Force Captain who has the same perspective. As he explains it, either the officers ordered the troops to mistreat the prisoners, or they didn't have control of their troops. Neither is excusable for an officer in the armed forces.
The corollary being that the soldiers who are taking the blame for it are, in a way, scapegoats, because the liability goes up the chain and somebody is getting away with it.
They want very particular types of initiative, in particular the initiative to take command of a situation when necessary. What they do not want is people who question authority.
I did some research a while back on the differences between eastern and western military doctrine in World War II. One of the keys was the the Soviets, for various reasons, allowed very little command flexibility in their ranks. Operations were planned to extremely minute details and all subordinates were expected to stick to the plan no matter what (one big reason was they had poor communications infrastructure to change the plan dynamically).
The west, in contrast, had less detailed plans, and relied on their officers adapting their tactics to the facts on the ground as they appeared.
Erm, you don't join to the Israeli army, you get drafted in. It's not a matter of they want you or not, if you live in Israel and a Jew, you will end up in the army and will keep rank and title for the rest of your life, as a reserve.
Sorry, I disagree.
While discipline IS essential, absolute discipline is not. Possibly the most important thing for an elite unit is being smart and adaptable. If you receive an order to destroy an enemy observation post so a surprise attack can occur, but find a machine gun nest with a good field of fire, it may be more important to destroy that first. You need to be smart to realize that is more important, and adaptable to change your plans to cope with it. If you blindly follow your orders, more people are going to die.
Smart + Adaptable > absolute discipline
If absolute discipline were all that was required of an elite unit, why would intelligence be a requirement for those elite units? Want to join the SEALs, Marine Force Recon, FAST Battalion or Green Berets? You better be able to score well on general intelligence tests and on practical tests within your field. If discipline was the be-all end-all of elite units then they would be full of people who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag.
BTW - While I was at the SEAL training facility in Virginia, they didn't worry about polished boots. They didn't worry about having their utilities pressed. They didn't worry about their appearance. They worried about what their job was and how to be ready for it.
I played D&D, AD&D, Top Secret, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret SI and Robotech. I also MUDed way too many hours.
I was also a Marine Rifleman. I served with the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) Co. Have achievement medals from the Marines and the Army (Joint Operation). Was a squad leader and a platoon sergeant and a company gunnery sergeant; and I wanted people who could think on their own in my squad/platoon/company.
Also, the Marines doctrine was based on mission accomplishment and not absolute discipline. So your statement of "all military doctrine" kind of goes out the window.
was gonna add: if the Israeli army doesn't want weirdos who have a skewed sense of reality in their ranks, then they probably shouldn't accept fundamentalist religious types who believe the earth is 6000 years old or that god will send you to hell for all eternity for eating a goat, what with cloven hooves being unclean and all.
Funny you should mention that. Orthodox are not subject to the draft.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Sorry, you're confusing self discipline in personal details with conformation to doctrinal procedures. As an avid D&D player in High School, a West Point grad and an ex M1 officer, I can tell you that if you can't think on your feet and figure out a new way to skin the cat, you won't survive long in mobile armored warfare, let alone dismounted urban warfare.
Recognize also the level you were working at and your particular unit. You didn't get to see how creative your battalion commander had to get to handle his missions with the incredibly lean Ranger force.
If you still doubt me, go back to some of the officers you admired most and ask them about operational and tactical flexibility. Get comfortable, you'll be there a while.