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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?"
Whenever you have a set of people who can creatively think outside the box you will get unique solutions to common problems. A lot of the time people are told this is the way you must do something. By reinforcing play at with no constraints except for the effect from the choice you will get different ideas and solutions from the norm.
If you contrast table gaming with no rules for the players versus console gaming in which you must do x to get to y you will alwasy have more creative solutions in the table gaming. This doesn't mean a standard solution will not work or will not be better, but you can't change the boundaries of a console game for a unique solution to a problem so you never challenge the creative juices of a player and reinforce creative ideas; just the opposite you reinforce finding a solution only within the rules. Is this what you are talking about?
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I've always characterised software engineering as "the only engineering that doesn't do physics" (true at my university).
I think us programmer types are drawn to the appeal of being able to create our own virtual worlds, within which we define the laws of "physics" based on elegance and usefulness in the problem/game domain. The real world is too arbitrary and chaotic to be able to understand all the interactions in any given system properly. Programs and RPG worlds don't have that problem.
We like to dream , and we like to make our dreams reality .After all programming is about turning thoughts in to something tangible .Role playing is about turning the dreams of adventure we all have in to some sort of reality .
The only reason some people look down on it , is because they don't have the courage to do it for fear of looking silly.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I always found roleplaying boring and the same goes for star wars cultism. Well, people still call me a nerd as I fulfill many other qualifications (socially awkward, hw/sw tinkering, programming - of course).
Somehow (this is not meant as an offense) I feel that those roleplayers like to detach themselves from the real world in their games and that this is their primary motivation to do this.
Maybe some people are fascinated by detached fantasies and others are fascinated by the real world around them and maybe extrapolations (how the world could be changed).
Two of the three best programmers I know have no interest in role playing games, or game coding. They work primarily with hardware interface/control and embedded systems.
However, I can imagine game programming talent might benefit from RP playing.
Yeah, that could be part of it. But it's certainly not the whole story.
I've known people to prefer a MUD PK war to a date with a beautiful woman; a game of capture the flag to sex; Word of Warcraft to their loving SOs. There's something about the gamer/coder personality type that is more than a function of
1. Being good at analytical thinking
2. Poor performance in social situations.
It's more of an attraction to certain modes of thinking and systems of reward than failing at the "real world". In some people, at least.
I really enjoy getting into the characters - developing them.
Its not about the problem solving. Its about using my imagination to shape things. Coding is the same. I build upon the world, and the structures that I make please me.
A lot of the entertainment in role playing is in the fact that doing so is easy. I can code a behaviour I envision in perhaps a few hours or a few days, but I can create a character in a few minutes - and act him out with much greater detail.
I think that the reason behind this is not so much that coders like to solve problems, but that people who roleplay are drawn to programming for the same reason - its a personality type thing. Which personality type?
This one.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This is blindingly obvious to everyone except themselves; like the story submitter, they tend to make up all sorts of more palatable justifications for why they like their hobby. It's all pretty sad really. Social anxiety problems can be largely resolved given practice, so the sooner they stop the self-denial and start becoming adults, the better.
Ya know what.. when I hang around with my fiancee and her friends, all they talk about all night is work. And not the technical workflow details.. they spend all night talking about the people at their work. Someone will say a name, someone else will say their opinion of that person, someone else will counter with an anecdote about that person, etc. Basically it's nothing more than gossip. The other alternative is a discussion about religion or politics in which someone will inevitably take someone elses' opinions personally, get all flustered and maybe break down crying. If this is what "normal people" talk about I think I'd rather hang out with geeks.. at least we can have a conversation without backstabbing other people or thinking others are personally attacking us when they express their opinions.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Gamers have several reasons to be less-than-satisfied with WoTC, compared to TSR, including:
- "Updating" the ruleset (ie. version 3.5) to the point that half the "current" DnD books are using incompatible rules which require serious work by the DM in order for their material to work with the 3.5 rule-system.
I could go on... but I think I've proven my point: WoTC hasn't always shown consideration to its customers. The parent was perfectly justified for voicing dissatisfaction with WoTC. Mod him up./dev/random
Programming and art are two sides of the same coin. They're merely different ways of reasoning, exploring, and doing. People who tilt too far one way or the other may be very good at that narrow task, such as coding or drawing, but not so hot at its opposite, which explains a lot of coders with no social life and artists who can't run a business.
Being successful requires the ability to deliver a product and understand relationships, and is true whether you're designing and playing games, working in the garden, or decorating a house. Image what would've happened if Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had never got together, if you want to test the theory.
Many religions, business theories, and ways of war have known this, and the best leaders, the best achievers, have made themselves and been made by a balance between logic and emotion, a positive drive, and the ability to move people. None of this is new, none of it is a secret. The only difference between those who make it happen and those who don't is in its application.
The Best Boss Is...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4357938.stm
Conflict Resolution Pair Wins Nobel Economics Prize/ 0,9830,1588912,00.html
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story
I know a lot of folks who play tabletop RPGs, boardgames, tabletop wargames, and other "old-fashioned" types of games. A LOT of these people (and they are not all male) work with computers all day; many of them are programmers or engineers. They get sick of staring at a PC monitor all day and like to hang around with actual people every once in a while.
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Jeez, does anyone remember T$R and their hordes of SCO-like lawyers? How fast we forget.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Role Playing Games encompass a lot. One big part of role playing games is designing logical systems for determining the outcome of events. Example: You are Jay D'Canton, a Paladin, you are wearing chain mail and carrying a mace. You enter a room with four Orcs. Three of the Orcs are armed with wooden clubs and wearing thick animal furs, the fourth has a short sword and studded leather armor. How does the battle go?
Well, figuring out whether the Orcs get Jay's head for their pointy stick, or whether Jay makes short work of them depend on a lot of factors. Is Jay fresh out of Paladin school, or has he been at this for a while? How much protection does his armor give? Are the furs the Orcs are wearing purely decorative or do they offer cushioning versus Jay's mace?
So, varous systems are created, if Jay has killed x number of Orcs, he'll become a "level two" Paladin who is better at fighting and avoiding attacks. The Orcs will get a damage and "to hit" penalty based on Jay's armor, which will also be represented by a number called an armor class. So too will every aspect be determined, with each step be given a logical number value and with the steps relating logically. You should be able to take a list of numbers, including numbers created by die rolls, run them through your system, and figure out the outcome.
Ah, the systems... the beautiful beautiful systems. Everything from systems for determining the weather to a system determining the random effects of the Wand of Wonder.
This all works until those horrible Players come along and mess up your beautiful system. "I don't think the Orcs should be able to hurt me with wooden clubs. Oh, and," quick edit to Jay's character sheet, "turns out my mace is a magical mace +5 versus Orcs."
Meanwhile, you have some people across the street dressed up as Vampires, but they aren't rolling dice at all. They are treating the game as improvisational Theatre. They may have a system, too, but they seems to see things in terms of "roll playing" versus "Role Playing." (I really don't know much about them, though I have one of their game books, for the collection of course. Still... I got a distinct impression from reading White Wolf magazine while looking for Call of Cthuhlu articles.)
Personally, I prefer board games in the popular genre's to their role playing equivalents. They have a nice, rigid sense of order. Of course, you don't get to create your own systems, or build a big "Dungeon" or "Module" system out of the smaller systems provided in the books. However, what does it matter when your fellow players would rather ignore the rules or shoot the breeze.
Besides, I more likely to get a "non-gamer" to play a game of Dungeon! or Black Morn Manor with me than a game of Dungeons and Dragons (and believe me I've tried!)
Of course, my brother (call him "Inu Yasha"), who is deathly afraid of computers loves getting together with the guys for an evening of pizza and D&D. I think it is more for the comaradery than enjoying of watching a rigid system designed to determine the effects of an undead invasion in a small medieval hamlet. Trust me, the guy just started using Email, and when he sees some of the things I do with my computer, he's like, "That's horrible, that's like the inventions of that guy from Gremlins. I'll be happy using a DVD player to watch movies rather than that complicated set-up." Actually, he may have said The Goonies, but I think Gremlins is a cooler movie...
What was my point again?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/staff/tres/elements.html
Cockburn's papers describe the evolution of his ideas on software development as a cooperative game.
Resorting to ad hominem attacks like that really doesn't help your point.
I'll agree that some people use roleplaying (or anime, novels, what have you) as a form of escapism. But I'll bet there are a lot more who use them simply as a form of entertainment, as they are designed to be. Not all of us have this urge to rip on anything that's not a true literary work of art; what is fun, is fun, and doesn't need justification beyond that.
To some people, daily life isn't trivial. Daily life holds a lot of their attention and is where they channel their passion.
Personally, I don't get it. Yeah, I have fun fixing computer problems but my social standing in relation to my co-workers or neighbors isn't that important to me. Actually, now that I think about it, my social standing in relation to my friends and family isn't that important to me either. In fact, I don't really want to have anything to do with the outside world, other than online. Wonder if it's time to move up to Luna base?
I drank what? -- Socrates
The only real connection between programmers and roleplaying games is when Operation Sundevil (http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/)raided Steve Jackson Games' offices over the Cyberpunk RPG. I think the correlation you mention would also be found among polymer scientists, physicists, chemists, or any other field filled with moderately intelligent, nerdy people.
I'm kind of surprised not to see SJG/GURPS mentioned alongside TSR in the followups, it was a much more flexible and open system. Or Shadowrun? It was pretty interesting too.
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That's probably true. Similar to how little kids often create imaginary friends when they are having problems with others in the real world.
I'm probably one of the few geeks that detest these games though.the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
How many actually roleplay, as oppose to powergame?
Visit any MMORPG and you'll find a vast excess of "K3wLd00dZ" over those trying assume a role. They run around talking smack and looking to exploit any flaw in the game design that they can. In fact, often they don't even seem to want to play the game at all, so they beg for resources from other players to shortcircuit the advancement process.
I suspect that the reward for the majority of players (if not most) is the advancement in "power" of their characters and the excitement of risk in "combat", rather than dialogue and character development.
These advantage of these games is that the ruleset is well-defined, unlike life. Life and social relations are messy. What is social success? It's a state rather than an accomplishment. Its measurement is relative and subjective. You can never finish and move on to the next goal. It requires constant effort and it can still fall apart for reasons outside your control.
So it's no wonder that people who have a strong affinity for defined structure (unambiguous, follows a logical ruleset, black and white) are less likely to find social situations rewarding, and more likely to find both games and coding (what could be more black and white?) very rewarding. The creative aspect of roleplaying games is just icing on the cake for some.
You know, there's a disturbing trend I'm noticing among a lot of nerds, and your post, complete with name calling (" Dorks like roleplaying") and armchair shrink trolling ("the sooner they stop the self-denial and start becoming adults, the better") is just a prime example of that: the "I'm Mr Perfect, you're all idiots, losers and in denial to boot" kinda mentality. In fact, I'll postulate that that should be _the_ definition of a "nerd" or "dork", and might well be the reason for social ineptness.
I know society as a whole is judgmental, relatively self-centred and "us vs them", but (like many other activities and social rituals they don't understand) nerds take this to an extreme it was never supposed to be taken to. It's like noticing that people use salt and vinegar in their soup, and deciding to make your soup out of _only_ salt and vinegar.
The social "us vs them" theme is supposed to find some common ground for the "us" part in that gossip. It's real purpose, conscious or not, is to find some common grounds to backpat each other in that "us" group. E.g., yeah, we might have other differences of opinion, but we're both fans of the same football club, so we're great. Not to become an "Me vs the rest of you losers" extreme.
Basically you know you're a nerd when your world is made of one Mr Perfect prototype, yourself, and sad losers who fail to measure up to that. And every single tiny difference of interests or difference of opinion is put on a pedestal, as definitive proof that everyone else is an idiot. And hey, it was said by Mr Perfect himself, so it _must_ be true.
Basically you know you're a nerd when you find yourself passing such broad sweeping judgments, like:
- did you study, say, law or medicine while I was learning to optimize assembly? Bah, what a sad loser. I bet you can't even code your own kernel drivers. Is that sad or what?
- ok, so you studied CS too, but do you use the same OS, language or editor that I do? You use another one, huh? (E.g., so we're both on Linux, but you code in C++ while I do Java, or viceversa, and use vi instead of emacs, or viceversa. Or worse yet, you use an IDE.) Ah-ha! I knew it. Idiot. It's people like you who are what's wrong with the world today.
- and how long is your uptime anyway? Only two weeks? Hah. Loser.
- what hobbies do you have anyway? Is it books or movies while I prefer gaming, or viceversa? What a sad loser you are, then. You're in denial. Grow up, get a life, get the One True Hobby.
- Ok, so if it's the same hobby, what flavour of it is it? E.g., do you prefer SF/fantasy books movies while I prefer murder mysteries, or viceversa? Haha, I knew it, it sucks to be you. You only read those because you don't have a life and are in denial. Or if it's games, do you like story-driven games while I like Mario-style jump puzzles, or viceversa? You guessed, you're a loser again for failing to measure up to my perfection.
Etc, etc, etc.
It's a sort of a sieve that really doesn't let anything through. There is no "us" in a nerd's "us vs them", it's one big case of Mr Perfect vs 7 billion sad losers who fail to measure up.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
More than being a "well defined World" it is a realm that employs, at least superficially, very different rules for social interaction and dominance. How many times have you seen the "Geek" who would fail in any popular social dynamic lead a role playing crowd with as much confidence as a capable leader in a more standard social setting. The variation is not with rule set, but fundamentally lies in the individuals reinforcement of their own confident self-view. Rpgs don't exhibit non-standard social dynamics, they simply draw big fish in small pool personalities. And in the end don't all programmers see themselves as being small pool participants?
Did I see the crash comming? Yes. Did I do anything about it? No. Instead I spent time in the world of RP ending up as a wizard writing my own part of the world. That was mush easier than trying to work with the real world and make it work for me and the people around me. After the crash of my life I haven't spent anywhere near the amount of time in the world of MUD:s again.
It's all about where you can get in control. For me it was clearily programming and RP in combination. Today I am a dormant mudoholic.
Lack of women where?
My programming classes average about 1/3 to 1/2 women (is this influenced by my being a female tutor?), and my roleplay society is half and half. Maybe this is from the same bag of stereotypes that claims all IT grads are either young males, pale and thin, wearing thickrimmed glasses, and having no social skills - or older males, bearded and wearing sandals?
There are precious few women wargamers though - once on of my mates was asked to change her low-cut top in a tournament, so's not to distract her opponent!
Of my university roleplay society, the top 4 degree groups were english (creative writing and drama); biological sciences (aliens! cyborgs!); history (when did they invent muskets?); and information sciences (including everything from electronic engineering through IT to maths)
The shared skillset is great - especially if one is playing in not traditional sword-and-sorcery, but science-fiction or cyberpunk genres.
Do roleplayers make better programmers? Now, there's a research project for someone - "Should IT companies offer RPGs in preference to paintball or squash as 'management training' games"?
It's easy (and a cheap laugh) to say that roleplaying only attracts spoddy types who can't get laid. Whilst it's true that a lot of people who fit this description enjoy these games, I think the causality is somewhat clouded.
I really enjoy roleplaying games and used to play with my old schoolfriends, none of whom were these geek-loser types. When I went to university, I joined the RPG society there but quit pretty quickly because I couldn't stand the obsessive zitty nerds who were the only people there.
Now, I would really like to get back into RPGs, but I can't because I know the only people I would find who would want to play are people I would rather not play with. I wonder how many people are put off getting into roleplaying games - which are basically just like cool board games but with continuity - because they don't want to spend their time with frighteningly nerdy people. This is especially true of women, who have to beat those horny nerds off with a stick.
Incidentally, there is an separation between the positive geek traits (understanding and passion for technology, belief in technical meritocracy, intelligence and hard work) and the negative geek traits (social disfunction, obsession, elitism). It is completely possible to have the positive traits without the negatives - why don't people seem to get this?
Peter