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?"

Comments

A connection? Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lack of women!

roleplaying?

[charliebear]

Well, I used to code, and me and the wife like to role play every once in a while, so I guess there is a correlation.

Re:roleplaying?

[captaincucumber]

I have a question. Why are Ask Slashdot questions always so stupid? They are more interesting for their amusement factor than for their content. I especially enjoy the self-serving questions like the high school kid who is so much smarter than his peers and asks slashdot "do other people have this problem? How do you cope?" or the unemployed engineer who says "I'm so smart and qualified but I can't find a job. Anyone else having this problem?" I have a question that I've been meaning to submit, but haven't gotten around to it yet:

"Why do I have such a big penis? Does everyone else have a big penis or am I alone in having such a great big penis?"

What do I think?

[nagora]

I think if Wizards of the Coast had an interesting idea they'd probably not know what to do with it, assuming that they recognised it.

TWW

Umm, poor people skills?

[fuzzy12345]

Admit it folks, building or exploring fantasy worlds has a special appeal for people who feel they're having less than average fun in the real world.

It's sad but true, and we know it.

Re:Umm, poor people skills?

[TrappedByMyself]

It's more of an attraction to certain modes of thinking and systems of reward than failing at the "real world"

You really have something there. Alot of geeks are conditioned to compare themselves to the popular crowd. They put themselves up against standards which they're not designed to meet, like an apple becoming depressed because it's not orange. They become 'losers', so they sink into this gaming world where they can win. On WoW for instance, there are so many people playing, that the field is very average. Any dedication will make you 'better' that alot of the other people you compete against. It's a huge ego boost to take out someone else in one-on-one combat. It's a well defined world, where winning is easy, much much easier than competing in the real world.
And I'm not talking about gaming for fun, it's the people who game for survival. The sad thing is that these reculsive geeks do have the tools to compete in the real world, they are just afraid to try.

//recovering gaming geek ;)

Re:Umm, poor people skills?

[daigu]

I don't know what kind of science fiction you read. But, I don't think most can be described as pleasant.

I also find it interesting that you leap to these conclusions. Would you say the same of people that do needle point? They should just stop deluding themselves and get more social and "adult"?

How about gardening, reading, golf, long distance running - or any other mostly solitary activity that people enjoy. What all these people need to do is just go to more parties and be more social?

Gaming is, in fact, more social than these activities, yet no calls you socially inept if you happen to be an ultra-marathon runner - even though as one you spend much more time away from people. What makes gaming such that you assume gamers are socially inept? Might it merely be a prejudice on your part? I've known people to make these comments because they don't find gaming useful - whereas running, gardening, needle point are considered useful in our society.

Further, it is okay for people not to like social situations. I've found that most people are fairly interesting alone. Turn something into a social situation where people do not know one another, and they immediately make themselve less interesting. I've wasted enough time talking about the weather with people and I'm extremely anxious that someone will take up more of my life wanting to talk about this inane topic. You know what I mean?

Other hobbies

[saintlupus]

I've noticed that cooking is also a big hobby for us computer nerd types.

Home brewing, too.

--saint

I...

[Anonymous Coward]

I ... [rolls d20] ... agree totally!

So does working at McDonalds.

[CyricZ]

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.

That applies just as much to the workers at McDonalds and to farmers as it does to basically any other job that requires an ounce of skill. Before the 1960s such tasks were often called "common capabilities". That is, they were the basic tasks that pretty much anyone and everyone was expected to be able to do. It's only now, with declining education systems in many western nations, that we consider mastery of such menial tasks to be an accomplishment.

future conditional thought processes

[G4from128k]

I think both role-playing and programming involve a "what if I do X" future-conditional thought process. Controlling a character in game or a byte-character in a program are not that different. They both require some explicit thought of future consequences of scripted actions in the context of a mechanistic system. This is especially true for DMs or scenario developers who must constantly think about how their setup will affect the player's future actions to guide those players toward some attainable game goal.

Thinking abstractly about "what-if" is key to creating code that does what you want and expect it to do. Thinking about what-if is fantasy, by definition.

It's cultural

[scenestar]

It's like asking, why do football players attend keg parties? Coding and roleplaying are part of geek culture

socially dynamic? quite the opposite, in a way

[Fross]

the social aspects of roleplaying are far less dynamic than real social interactions, because they are so much more controlled. you understand what your fellows are driving towards, the dialogue and situations are often cliched, or at least familiar, and there is less at stake, less responsibility, socially - if you make a jackass of yourself you can just claim you're roleplaying, and you already know that the people you're playing with are of a like mind to yourself, especially given the intelligent nature of a "game" such as RP.

there are less unknowns, less uncertainties - and this is what is usually a problem for the socially inept - lack of confidence because of lack of certainty, which is what comes across as nerdishness.

add into this the familiarity with the subject matter through books, films, and more recently computer RPG games, and the (to the mainstream) hurdle of a fantasy world is a non-event. the other aspect, which certainly will appeal to the mathematically design minded (not to mention the neurotic obsessive-compulsive detail freaks) is the range of stats, rules - *formal* descriptors of how the world interacts. if someone chucks a baseball at you, it's not down to something an unsporty nerd has little practice/familiarity with (ie catching it with his hands), but rather something quantifiable and determinate, stats, modifiers and a dice roll.

this may sound harsh, particularly as i'm a programmer and have been a roleplayer quite extensively myself, but in our heads we're all great actors, witty people, conversationalists, sometimes we just need to find the right outlet for it to come out in.

Mmmm, no

[Reality Master 201]

Being a successful programmer involves more than just applying abstract rules. In fact, the most significant factor in one's success in real world programming is not ability in solving problems (creatively or not).

A succesful programmer is one that can sucessfully characterize and identify a problem. Far too often, I've seen people jump right into solving what they think the problem is (often during a meeting with a client), without first doing the (admittedly boring) legwork of ensuring that you understand the domain of the problem and the specific things that require solutions.

Unless, of course, you're talking in the realm of 133t h4x0r programmers. But there, the concern is being the hot coding stud, not in delivering a workable, maintainable, stable software product.

mod parent up...

[ltwally]

Just because the parent's comment wasn't exactly nice to WoTC does not invalidate it... Many, if not most, "serious" dnd players/dm's very much miss TSR -- a company that was full of innovative ideas and actually seemed to want to please its customers.

Gamers have several reasons to be less-than-satisfied with WoTC, compared to TSR, including:

• Bringing out crappy products just to fill the monthly release cycle, instead of focusing on polishing products to a point where DM's don't have to read through a book to be able to sanction official content.

• Releasing books that seem more focused on pretty artwork than solid material -- and, of course, the artwork costs more to print, so the cost for the book is increased. Go figure

• Refocusing resources into creating entirely new realms (ie. Eberron) instead of updating much-loved and heavily-played pre-existing realms (ie. the Forgotten Realms). (note: I'm not saying Eberron sucks. I'm just saying that FR needs a lot of work before it is updated to d20, still.. and it's been 5 years since 3.0 debuted.)

• "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.

Here's my own definition of a dork, then

[Moraelin]

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.