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Dungeons & Dragons and IT
boyko.at.netqos writes "An editorial in Network Performance Daily tries to take a (1d6) stab at explaining why geeky engineering types are also typically the types that enjoy a rousing game of D&D. From the article "The greatest barrier to creativity is a lack of boundaries. Counter-intuitive — almost zen-like — but we've found it to be true. This is why people play Dungeons & Dragons (and similar games), and why network engineers often spend time putting out fires when they could be improving the network."
It's not necessarily always true, though. Yes, D&D characters tend to be heroes, as that's really the point of the game. However, as a counterexample, I've been involved in a campaign for two years where the two main PCs aren't the Conan the Barbarian type. One is a fairly ugly half-elf with a real ego problem and the other one is a dim-witted cleric who loves his god a little too much to the point of making everyone around him think he's a weirdo. Both of them held low rank in the worst company in their country's military for years in game time, and a lot of their "adventures" were doing really crappy jobs for their superiors. Once you put a player through that for a long time, any glimpse at being better than the average Joe Schmoe NPC is an awesome experience. It makes it feel like they really have "paid their dues" and as such their getting stronger is not a result of just killing random monsters for XP.
Granted, this is an unorthodox campaign, heavy on RP and low on combat (although it does happen, and we did once have a combat that covered three sessions as there were 30 soldiers + catapults vs. 50 soldiers across two battlemats in an all-out battle scenario). We don't do XP either, the characters advance by DM fiat when it appears that they have learned enough to progress or when story considerations demand it. They started at level 1 (effectively level 0 as peasants, that level got traded in for a real class), and after 2 years real time they are finally to level 10 and are adventuring on their own. They had a lot of help along the way as there are only two players in the campaign so there are a ton of NPCs that have been effective party members over the two years. Heck, some of the NPCs have as much stake in the story as the PCs and pthe players switch off playing them at times as secondary characters. One of the original PCs died and the player took over playing one of the more interesting NPCs at that point and still uses him as his primary. You know it's a big deal when even the NPCs have their own character sheets and backstories. None of the NPCs are heroes, either, most of them were from the same military unit or in one case was a town guard captain of the dinky town by the military post that got burned to the ground after the combo of a war, orc attacks, and undead rampages took it out. He was kind of a Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry guy who had his whole life thrown upside down and has now become very bitter.
It's a fun, different take on D&D. There are very few monsters involved, and the worst thing the players have had to confront in combat was a human army. They spend more time geting screwed over by politicians and dealing with their own personlity flaws that get them into trouble. Creativity does play a large role in it, as the players actions often determine where the story is going next. We are constrained by the world that the campaign is set in (Forgotten Realms), but that gives a good springboard for story events to occur. Somehow everything, even spontaneous stuff, always manages to mesh with the world as it exists in game materials (even the ones that hadn't come out at the time - that's the weird part, some of the stuff we thought we "invented" for the campaign has shown up in newer FR books, so we're inadvertently keeping canon). Granted all of us know FR pretty well so it would make sense that we'd take it in a similar direction as the game material writers.