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Coding and Roleplaying - Is There a Connection?
TossCobble asks: "With table-top roleplaying giant Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeons & Dragons, for those not in the know) broadcasting an open call for adventure designers and developers (including an entertaining developer test to gauge your own game-design talent and knowledge), I found myself once again considering the odd appeal of gaming for us programming types. It's interesting that something so free-form-ishly creative, socially dynamic, and utterly fantastical be fun for folks so grounded in logical programming. Of course, my theory is that gaming and programming actually have more in common than we might think. Tabletop roleplaying involves coming up with creative solutions to problems set in a clearly-defined ruleset, involve constant data-tracking and minor mathematical equations, and involve working together with small groups of people toward like-minded goals. Conversely, love of roleplaying can illustrate how important creativity is to good programming. What do you think?"
Actually, the grandparent is wrong. Wizards of the Coast bought the entirety of TSR, not just Dungeons and Dragons, as shown on the page that the parent linked to.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Oddly enough, every important-enough-to-affect-the-product-line D&D campaign has had at least one female in it, without fail.
Take it as you may.
We women *do* play D&D too.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
a company that was full of innovative ideas and actually seemed to want to please its customers.
What? Are we thinking the same TSR? The TSR that put itself into bankruptcy by alienating itself from its customers - threatening any who dared post a module they made themselves with legal action citing the module as a derivative product of their IP?
Is this how one pleases one's customers?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)