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10 Business Lessons I Learned From Playing D&D
Esther Schindler writes "Those hours you spent rolling dice in your youth weren't wasted according to my 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons. Playing fantasy role playing games did more than teach the rules of combat or proper behavior in a dragon's lair. D&D can instruct you in several skills that can help your career. Such as: 'One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells' and 'It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.'" What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
To be honest, this seems a lot like just made to work out from D&D. These are pretty much general principles in life that apply everywhere, and hence its not a surprise that they apply in *roleplaying* games aswell.
If you take it further, the same general principles that also works in business also works with women, or for that matter, any stuff. This can be something along the lines "dont be afraid to be yourself and be convinent when saying your say, because it works a lot better". It works the same way in RPG's, real life, women, business and for that matter in everything. Its just general human philosophy.
Like said, RPG games tend to reflect real life a lot. You just take different character. That's why the stuff is pretty much the same.
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
D&D: the more you played the less likely you were to get laid.
(Queue up the, "but I only gamed with hot vixens back in high school!" responses)
Oh and I also learned that playing D&D makes you sarcastic and bitter.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I learned that RPG's are nothing more than fancy statistical simulations that have as much to do with simulating anything as the order of playing blackjack.
Other than the content background which I can get from reading novels, playing RPG's is about as exciting as moving numbers around a spreadsheet.
It was a hard lesson, but I realized, if I am focused on making money and running a business, I make more money that when I'm focused on killing orcs and playing games. Seriously.
Qxe4
Well, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Always try to work with people you already know.
Playing as a team works better than being out for yourself.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Here is a good list of everything you will learn from RPGs: http://serpent231.tripod.com/cliche.shtml
Stepping on a d4 hurts a hell of a lot more than stepping on a d20.
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
Always loot the corpse!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
My most valuable lesson? That "Your breasts are perfectly symmetrical, like a well matched pair of D20 dice" is not a good pickup line.
.
Trolling is a art,
No matter how clever the idea sounds, livestock never fixes anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA ...sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself. Don't take yourself too seriously and you'll better handle the politics and vagaries of work.
mu
All of these are generic axioms. None of these are special or unique or "Oh I learned this ONLY from playing D&D". It's a bloggers way of using catch phrases to garnish interest and get posted around the internets for hits.
Slashdot fell for it, hook line and grell.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
1. Violence solves everything. ...except for the Great Big F***ing Sword of Silence. (see 1 & 2)
2. The only thing that trumps violence is more violence.
3. Wholesale slaughter is good and right as long as the race you are slaughtering has green/grey/orange/etc. skin.
4. Nothing wins an argument like a Rod of Silence.
4a.
5. "Your mom" jokes are a bad idea around dragons. Their moms are always bigger and meaner.
6. Charisma is a dump stat.
7. People will forgive any transgression if you can dish out the pain.
I quit. Anyone else?
Lesson I learned: Even if they can get annoying or you don't always agree, its always good to have a friend who is very religious, just in case.
In a dungeon, I just wanna pull out my Dwarf's Double Blade Axe, lop the head off a goblin and escape with the gold. At work, I just wanna go into the php file, remove the fucking ampersand, roll it out and go home. Either one however, requires sign-off and verification from multiple parties.
They'll try telling you that you "can't do that without creating a subversion branch first". Or "You can't do that without a level 6 Ring of Hurt".
Either way, you're better off just going to Home Depot, buying a real axe and running down all the goblins that stand in your way.
What I learned is that when your small, not terribly dangerous character happens to be the only one standing up on the ridgeline this turn taking a shot at that humongous monster (while everybody else is recharging their spells or reloading their weapons)... you die.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In games you have a simplified version of reality, but the people behind them are real, so some interactions with them. Games rich enough where you have commerce, in fact a whole economy, politics, things that you can play with, but if you are involved enough in the game you must learn to do it well, with rules that work even in the real world.
These are pretty much general principles in life that apply everywhere....
Sure. Just like, "Everything I really needed to know about life I learned from playing Tetris"
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
As are assumptions. For instance, assuming that D&D is a video game.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
I learned that Rust Monsters are as annoying as fuck.
If I see one of those around my neighborhood, I am totally going to be ready for them. Eat Kevlar, motherfucker!
Don't get me started about the Gelatinous Cubes.
Shopping for the right equiptment may take as much time as using it does, but it is well worth the effort.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Not with D&D, but with Call of Chtulhu... In doubt, sacrifice the priest. With that stunt, we have won the favors of shub-Niggurath.
In your office if it's to a greater good, you can sacrifice one to save all :D
Don't piss off the DM. Best life lesson ever.
These are all things that can be trace back to books written hundreds of years before our time. for example The Book of Five Rings and The Art of War, these two books have pretty much the blue print on problem solving. You can pretty much apply them to business, school, games, women, etc..
.. doesn't have a "save" feature like most CRPG's do. Think before you act. And, by the way, "talking" is acting...
But in real life, I found that to be rather bad advice. Things that look dead generally are either dead or helpless - whether it is a creature or a company.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is a losing strategy in real life, or even real war. (Roman saying: "The legion is not composed of heroes. Heroes are what the legion kills.")
First Diablo2 teached me to never make a shortcut on ALT F4 it ends bad
Also 5 Years of 'Vampire the Masquerade' LARP teached me no matter how good a Plot is Planned everyone whos involved will definately destroy it if he wants or not,so better dont plan anything and just be creative in the right moment
"Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business" -- Mr. Burns, The Simpsons
and gave me a starting point on 'measuring' motivations and tendencies. This in turn helped me predict behavior for various people in the workplace. If nothing else, it makes it obvious that people have motivations and tendencies along more than one axis; I then added on a 'radius' from true neutral and a 'strength/weakness' axis and it still serves me (albeit simplistically) in learning how to work with other people to get results.
If absolutely nothing else, it gives me a common language and a starting point for identifying good and evil behavior that I can use in discussions with D&D-familiar wage slaves -- otherwise it sounds weird to use the word 'evil' to describe behavior in a world of moral relativism. Being able to back it up with a clear description helps. (Read from here on for the next 210 strips for a version with pictures).
... it's easier to find a new DM than a new boss. Though unlike a boss, the Tinpot Dictator model of DM - the kind who doesn't listen to the players, who's "my way or the highway" with the rules, who tells you can always find another game if you don't like how he does things - is more likely to eventually change his tune if his players are unhappy.
Always carry poison.
Seriously. Growing up in the US suburbs, the concept of 'bartering' is foreign, and considered impolite at best, and offensive at worst, to the point where you will be banned from a shop for it. Fast forward a decade after my D&D experience and I found myself alone for half a year in a middle eastern country. And shopping in the bazaar for supplies. Almost immediately the bartering skillset I had learned playing D&D for the better part of five years raced to the forefront. While spells and armor were not available (but automatic weapons were) , I still made out just fine, and never had to roll the D20 I kept in my pocket. Yes, I still have that talisman some 30 years later, it's a useful decision making tool.
What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?
For one thing, that wisdom is different than intelligence. I'm still not sure what the difference is, but at the time I read the rules, I assumed that someone wiser (or is that smarter) than me had written them, so he probably knew what he was talking about.
Cheat, cheat, cheat then stick to your story if you get caught.
That all my fellow troubleshooters coworkers are all expendable. To spy on everyone. Use information to turn in communists. Keep your laser(pointer) ready.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
Here's a good starting point. It's a sad and horrifying tale of corporate intrigue that led to business failure.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
*I* know what a gazebo is.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I got most of my financial knowledge from "Corporate Shadowfiles": put options, selling short, commercial paper, hostile takeovers, the works.
And I still have to acquire a multinational corp to put that into practice :-(
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
Here's a good starting point. It's a sad and horrifying tale of corporate intrigue that led to business failure.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I know it's an old saying, but I learned it from playing RPGs (Shadowrun, in this case):
"If the only tool you have is a gun, all your problems start to look like targets."
Keep a creative and open mind and you'll go much farther than using the same ol' bag of tricks.
I guess the corollary to this is
"One dumb action makes things spiral quickly out of control."
... is that your DMs weren't very good, especially when it comes to adjudicating magic. And everyone knows what poor management does to a business!
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
That if I could trade a piece of my soul for the newest hardware, I would.....
"Under late capitalism, entertainment is the prolongation of work."
Theodor Adorno
Poster claims she and her husband were hired by a DM in one D&D game they played a few months in.
Never in all my D&D and role play games career, did I ever get offered a job. Sure I did a lot of problem solving and followed the same business advice in the original article. I even listed role play games as a hobby on my resume. I got my jobs by hard work at other jobs and building up a good reputation by writing reliable source code that optimized memory and ran faster than other programmers, plus I had good debugging skills.
It did not work, eventually management went with "good enough" because computers ran faster than ever and with large hard drives and RAM memory, and then optimized memory and running faster didn't matter, as companies went with the cheaper coders who ran code "good enough" to get work done even if it crashed the system and servers 12 times a day. I got sick, and I learned that getting old and being married are job liabilities because management wants to overwork "salaried" employees up to 60 or 80 hours a week for no extra pay. Being older and married with children means I cannot spend the extra time a younger and single programmer can that does not have kids. Plus IT and Engineering jobs often get offshored to the lowest bidder.
In short D&D and role playing lessons learned did not help me out in my career. The industry changed and turned on me. What jobs I had I got overworked at until I got stressed out and got sick and ended up on disability. Technology keeps changing to the point that even the sloppiest code runs fast enough even if it is a memory hog and crashes the system daily, the people who write the sloppy code agree to work for a low salary and work overtime for no extra pay and stay single with no kids, and people like me cannot compete with them anymore.
My only hope is to start up my own small business of writing software, and hope the banks agree to lend to me to grow my company so I can develop and market my own brand of software. But the economy is really bad and banks refuse to lend to me because I am disabled. But the big companies are "too big to fail" so they get bailouts, but the small companies suffer and go out of business.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
... were my group's main games - so we learnt all about being an expendable clone (gives you the right attitude when working in an consultancy firm), living (and dying) at the inexplicable whim of the Computer (got me used to designing and developing big-iron ERP software) or power crazed Ultra Violets (helped me understand the motives of consultancy managers - i.e. they don't have motives, they are actually mad with power and fresh coffee).
We also learnt a lot about unspeakable horror (which has helped me cope with the inevitable fallout when what a customer originally told you they want turns out to be something so wildly different and pointless that it makes grown men cry), inevitable loss of sanity (which usually happens when I find out what BAs and developers are actually doing), strange incantations that will raise you-know-who from his icy palace in the North Pole (I use a similar technique to get senior management to tell BAs and developers off for whatever they were doing) and all manner of spells and chants to excise minor minions of you-know-who in return for a minor loss of sanity (which I use to rid clients of big-5 leeches in return for never getting work from them again).
So yeah, I learnt a lot.
Also, I have nightmares (huge insect-like creatures with flashing beacons for heads, floating drums with tentacles, Thor, people dressed up in coloured overalls waving guns in my direction, a big eye in my PC monitor, and of course, a really weird dream where I take over a library by producing a small card voucher).
So isn't it good to ***play*** and work out what Real Life holds for you ***in the future*** rather than wait until you get there and work out the rules?
What is play for but to try out the rules of Real Life?
And as for nizo's comment later, I gained a hot (if slightly older) girlfriend at D&D. Didn't stay, but that wasn't D&D's fault.
- The right shoes can be a weapon if you have the appropriate melee skill.
- Rockerboys are mostly just good for "creating a distraction."
- You may have come up with a great narrative, but you need the numbers to back it up. (I'm a grant writer for a living; I can write up a great proposal, but if the budget doesn't work, it's irrelevant. When I tried my hand as a GM the first time, I had a good storyline, but hadn't actually specced out my NPCs at all, so combat fell apart.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
that the rules of business are much like the rules of an RPG simulation. Some can be bent, others can be broken.
Oh shit, no. Sorry, I learned that watching The Matrix.
Better than the lessons I learned playing Diplomacy... How to lie, cheat, and swindle your best friends to their face, then band with my enemy to crush them and take their lands... So I might be that much stronger when I go for my true enemies...
Though the lessons one learns LARPing also throws in how to tread softly, gain confidence and outtalk your enemies, to make friends, how to fix 'Anything' with duct tape, that you are not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you, and adds a good amount of running around in fresh air... Really, if you love D&D, look for your local NERO chapter (nerolarp.com/) and give being an NPC a shot, a free way to experience the game... (Yes, there are other LARPs out there, but its a good starting point...)
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
We were playing "Grim", where the PCs are children transported into a dark fairytale world. (Just about the first thing that happened to us was that Hansel and Gretel tried to eat us.) This is a world full of Big Bad Wolves, evil princesses etc, and we were just children. I very quickly developed an aphorism which proved very useful:
"A problem run away from is a problem solved."
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Min-maxing. Get the most out of every situation with the least put in, whether that be biggest return on the smallest monetary investment, most work done in the least amount of time, etc. Make every iota of effort, energy, money, anything you put into the world pay you back as big as you can.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
I learned that unlike in D&D, hamming up your real life characteristics that are unpleasant does not award you more gold or experience. There is not story xp awarded for stealing your co-workers stuff just because you like being sneaky and taking shiny things. Failure in real life really means failure not additional experience points for acting like an asshole just because you are.
That video games are a pretty bad place to gain wisdom from?
Are you kidding? Just the other day, I found a magical hat that gave a +5 bonus to Wisdom.
I learned only one lesson in D&D. That is if you don't play D&D, your chances of getting laid by a 7 or better increases by about 2^32%.
In life and in D&D the number one lesson is if things aren't going your way, argue with the person in charge that they should, be they dungeon master or boss. Come up with a reason, however illogical, why they should go your way, wham, your in.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I learnt heaps - using Force Points to meet 'impossible' coding deadlines.
Don't accumulate too many dark side points though - you will end up as a middle manager
Everything I really needed to i learned from playing with myse.. whoops, i haven't finished writing it yet....
If you can't outsmart an orc, and also can't fight him... just FLY AWAY! (AION) lol
After many hours playing RPG I learnt, and I am still learning 3 main things: -Patience: Sometimes you just do not know how many times you will have to redo an incredibly boring routine until you earn what you deserve. Call it money, experience or just jumping through that damn rock path (this appeals to many platform games too). -Usefulness: I used to carry everything I found until my players where full of junk. Spetially important in games as Oblivion. If junk can be just sold out, some real hard times were when you had a great orc killer item and an in general terms better item, but you had to choose. Sometimes you just can bury it and get back to it later. When I was 12 years old it taught me to take decisssions in terms of usefulness for the future. It now looks naif, but hey, it has helped me a lot in real life. - English language: For non native english speakers, when no game was translated to our languages, RPG, as they have lots of dialogues and backline stories, were quite difficult (remember I was 12 back then). I say, with no doubt, that Betrayal at Krondor and those damn chest games taught me more english vocabulary than Sesame St., Muzzy, English lessons and Oxford's dictionaries together. Yee olde english language! - Why not saying this! I have a pretty good orientation sense when I get lost in dungeons!
What's so funny about that? I work in the supermarket stacking shelves and tetris has helped me a lot!
What I learned from Paranoia: Success or failure does not matter. Only making sure you are the only person left to tell what happened matters.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
"The More You Give The Players The Less They Try" - Do not overcompensate people, they get indulgent and lazy. Free coffee at work is one thing, free cappacinos is another.
"Never have a fight with more then 5 opponents at once. The logistics of managing it far outweight the adventure of it." - Throwing more bodies at a situation doesn't make the situation better by default. Too many people means you spend more time managing peopel the getting the task done.
"Never have the players fight a dragon. It will always be either too powerful and kill them or too weak and boring." Do not use deadlines and milestones as be-all end all measures of success. They'll either blow them out of the water and become paranoid of missing them and thus take shortcuts that will put the whole event at risk. Throwing a giant uber project at them isn't needed. The PM should give them what they need to know so they don't get overwhelmed.
"Beat the crap out of the players, they'll enjoy it more then being an invincible force." - Challenge people or they'll get bored. Keep them busy and keep the work flowing so they always have things left unfinished for the next day.
"Always scale the challenge to their level or they'll get bored." Promote people and keep them challenged in their career, not just their daily work.
"Take time away from the role playing and give them opportunities to just have fun with the mechanics of it." Give people te opportunity to break out from their work routine periodically. Cross train, volunteer work, and inter-department knowledge sharing.
I coudl go on but I am officially bored writing this :)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Start them off at epic level with a slew of common [but powerful] magical items. This makes them happy while effectively keeping them all relatively equal. Then I just scale up the adversaries, get creative with unique items and artifacts and craft difficult challenges for them. This makes them feel special and important and saves my sanity. Twenty becomes the new first level. No idea how this applies to real life at all, but I figured someone here might have the same problem. :)
You have to get out of the basement and DO something how 'bout that lesson?
From RPGs I learned:
I don't need to own a TV.
If you find it fun, do it - a santimonious arsehole has no right to stop you doing so.
It's more sociable than slobbing in front of the TV.
Getting involved in stories is fun.
From LARPs I learned:
Social interaction is easier than I thought.
Camping trips with friends are good, and having a game going on at the same time is even more fun.
You still get sanctimonious arseholes that disapprove, but you're still the one having fun and they're not.
Being machiavellian and devious in a consequence free environment pays off.
Being a prick in an environment where people can, and do react to it violently is also a good reminder of when you're being a prick.
From MMORPGs (EVE) I learned:
The value of money (utility vs acquisition)
That a market is dynamic, and sometimes just picking a number and selling something at that is better than trying to figure out what it's 'worth'
That the world is fundamentally pretty immoral
That there is _always_ a bigger sucker
And that stupid is a truly infinite resource
That leading people is both easier and harder than I thought, but when you get it right it works nicely.
And I still don't own a TV, and am less stupid than the majority of people who spend 3 hours a day vegetating.
1) Don't trust anyone. That thin weasel looking level 10 neutral fighter is probably a level 18 evil thief assassin, robbing you blind, skimming from the loot, and waiting to have you killed so they can loot your body.
2) The DM cheats,life isn't fair, deal with it if your nice and don't piss him / her off they may cheat for you and help you out, be nice don't start shit, & keep your head down you might just make it.
3) For god's sake don't forget your rope, tinder box & canteen. Your in for a long trip if you do.
4) It's not a bad idea to know a few of the enemies or foes language, and don't go blabbing that you do unless it's beneficial and the time.
5) Intelligence (not the stat), spy's and fore knowledge will save your ass use them wisely but also protect your source.
6) Security is a fallacy. No matter how bad ass that armor & sword is, no matter how much you train there is ALWAYS something that will kick your ass.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
I learnt about the whole supply and demand thing, et al.
- Dan
As you say, games simplify reality. If you want a real model of life, go read proper philosophy, not the cut-down element/spell explanations and witty one-liners you'll get in D&D books. Yes, there's some value in that, but not that much, compared to what you can get elsewhere. Try the Tao Te Ching for a relatively easy intro.
I think my favorite lesson would have to be "When faced with a dragon, keep in mind that you don't have to outrun the dragon, you just have to outrun the rest of your party."
This has served me well.
All the life lessons one truly needs can be found in Shadowrun. "Watch your back, shoot straight, conserve ammo, and never, EVER, deal with a dragon."
"Just a fox, a whisper."
While there was a bit of greedy butchery and mindless power-acquisition going on mostly what happened was story-telling, character development, working as a team, out-smarting opponents, building alliances, etc.
Grinding? In playing d&d, gurps, etc with a good group of people it *never* felt that way. We may have spent 2 years and never made it past 3rd level and struggled every step of the way - but it was a fun memorable time. Perhaps grinding happens more in computer-based "rpgs"? Or groups of kids that want nothing else than to have a 20th level character. Either way, in many years of playing I never really felt that.
Some of these qua business strategies are decent, but as rules of thumb for D&D, they're sorely lacking.
Bribe those in power, got it.
game in Steve's standard D&D world. Ivan drew up a first-level wizard character who had almost no hit-points and only one
wimpy spell: cast an illusion. Whereupon Ivan's character cast an illusion of a 5th-level illusionist... and proceeded to
run that powerful "5th level illusionist" through the rest of the game. Years later, Ivan played in a play-by-mail dungeon
(yes, children, we did those things before e-mail) in which the DM permitted custom spells. Ivan's "swap" spell seemed
Mostly Harmless: Transpose a 1" cube of anything with another 1" cube of anything. Whereupon Ivan set up a magical FedEx
business (for very short messages) and a sideline of an assassin-business (swap a square inch of heart muscle with anything
else; who could tell that murder was done?). This taught me to get everything possible out of the tools at my disposal. It
also taught me to expand my notion of "What do I have, and what can I do with it?"
These are treated as "exploits" in online games, because they actually work and are fun. The game disables anything that actually works, such as a sword. You didn't think a caster, who can't wear armor because it interferes with their delicate hand movements could continue his delicate movements, so easily disrupted, when a 10 foot tall ogre was swatting at them with a sword, did you?
And what would be the business parallel to some little thing done well being more powerful than tons of money and power?
"Hey, I bought this drill and metal saw at the hardware store. Let's sneak into the bank late at night and use it well!"
repetition of "Find a monster. Kill it. Get its treasure." But your character (and career) can get hurt that way. If instead
you set up a situation in which the orcs think that they were attacked by the goblins, the orcs will blow up the goblin
castle in retaliation. That leaves your party to walk through afterward, picking up the spoils (and the experience points).
"Let's you and him fight" is a very effective business strategy... or it's far safer for you, anyway.
It's better still to have a brain and set up your character to actually be effective in the limits of the rules. This isn't "metagaming", i.e. taking advantage of knowledge and behavior outside the game itself (like knowing the details of some monster you're not supposed to or what's around the corner on this module). It's just realizing that a fighter is a fighter, and a wizard, a wizard. Everyone else is a librarian or carwash attendant, and would do predictably well on an adventure.
Oh, and yes, one can be just as clever in figuring out "alternative solutions". Guess who'd be the better thief character, too?
And for the above example, if they literally blew up the castle, most of the good loot would be destroyed. And if they just attacked and killed everyone, they'd take the loot, leaving precious little for you. I don't think Nomad would be pleased.
offering me this three-headed dog trustworthy?") The DM often doesn't know, or he isn't telling; just because he puts
something in your path doesn't mean you need to trust it, accept it, fight it, or buy it. Experimentation without
investigation can be very painful; learn to ask questions. Steve didn't ask a single clarifying question about the beautiful
fairy-fly before he decided to catch it... and it burned a hole straight through his
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Congrats for learning common life lessons from D&D. Want a cookie? Those lessons can be learned in many ways other than playing D&D, and not everyone who plays D&D will learn those particular lessons. So, you pretty much have no point. May as well have told us what color shirt you wore last Tuesday, for all the transferable value you imparted. Yes, you're a unique snowflake and your life experience will never be duplicated... zzzzzzzz.....