Dungeons, Dragons & Engineers
I read this editorial on how Dungeons & Dragons relates to Network Engineering. The author tries to make the point that D&D, by limiting your options makes it easier to be creative which is why people enjoy playing it. Engineers (who play D&D) fight emergencies because they focus the mind on a more limited set of problems and thus are easier to work on than big picture things. I don’t really have a problem with part B of that reasoning, I just don’t agree or know why he bothered with part A.
Let’s look through a couple quotes:
Let’s try a little thought experiment.
Tell a story right now. It can be about or on anything. It doesn’t have to be a good story or even a long story. You don’t even have to write it down.
Having difficulty?
Okay. Try telling a story about a talking dog and a troll that live together in a cave.
That’s a little easier, isn’t it?
And then towards the end:
Knowing this axiom of human nature…
So, if you accept the notion that that is in fact the reason why people play D&D, because it limits their options and thus enhances their creativity and that it is a basic axiom of human nature, then why doesn’t everyone play D&D? I don’t really understand what that has to do with engineers in specific, or really what it has to do with the article at all. Fortunately for me, I don’t accept his premise. I agree with the point that if you have some place to start, it is easier to begin - which is true for everything from telling a story to cleaning a particularly messy room (that was Polgara’s advice to Belgarion, no?). But to give that as the reason people play RPG’s is quite a stretch.
I played D&D or whatever RPG because I liked the world it was in, it’s a game, so it needed to have rules. This is nothing new, it turns out Monopoly has rules and dice and a board, too. Poker has a few rules. That’s sort of the nature of games, they have rules. I don’t like poker because it limits the creativity of what I can do with the cards I like poker because it’s the fastest possible way for me to lose all my money, wait a second…
Here’s the reason people play D&D. I read sci-fi and fantasy and fiction because I like the story they tell and the worlds they describe. It turns out many engineers also read those books. Role playing games offer a way to place yourself into those worlds with like minded friends. That there are rules is fundamental to playing a game with others - sure you could play without rules, it’d simply be more difficult to resolve issues. Now if you want to write about what it is about sci-fi/fantasy that attracts the sort of person it does, that’s a whole different topic.
I think it’s true that it is, in general, easier to fight a fire than it is to tackle big picture problems. And true for the reasons he gives, while he’s talking about network engineering. I suspect he just threw in the D&D references as a means to get more eyeballs. Yeah. It worked like a charm on me.
