tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post2526238436738676487..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: Getting HighAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-88975210651556537242014-04-18T13:28:27.031-06:002014-04-18T13:28:27.031-06:00I can tell you Alan that the book is not specific ...I can tell you Alan that the book is not specific to any role-playing game. I can add that sections of the book would be directly applicable to business management, the dramatic arts, project development and design, public speaking, human resources, group dynamics and more . . . and that the last chapter of the book discusses what role-playing has done towards teaching me about the world and making me a better person.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-65187265138690879262014-04-18T13:11:36.902-06:002014-04-18T13:11:36.902-06:00Alexis, it is quite late in the game to suggest th...Alexis, it is quite late in the game to suggest this - but to what extent do you think your book on running a game could be tweaked also to address running other activities? I ask because your insights in the past twelve months have been really great synthesis of stuff I've previously encountered in naval leadership training, management training, instructor training, general psych, and legal economics.<br /><br />It might also make more sense to your befuddled coworkers, if you pitched this book as a treatise on running social events.<br /><br />Turning to the oxytocin topic, this and dopamine are the two neurotransmitters that military basic training invokes via mass physical exercise to the point of pain, and onward to daily exhaustion - the goal being to activate the part of the brain that makes us willing to slaughter the out-group for the sake of the in-group. For that reason, also, training groups are organized to include around 30-50 members.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-12481720209450515912014-04-17T14:40:20.424-06:002014-04-17T14:40:20.424-06:00Hah. Kumbaya. Talk about the dark side of oxytoc...Hah. Kumbaya. Talk about the dark side of oxytocin.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-31871769104654363012014-04-17T14:28:57.556-06:002014-04-17T14:28:57.556-06:00And this is the closest we'll ever come to see...And this is the closest we'll ever come to seeing Alexis suggest we sing kumbaya. Mark this day.<br /><br />On a more serious note, I'm going to sit and back and see if I notice different feelings based on how I'm running - it's a super interesting experiment to try. I'll be thinking about this one quite a bit. It's an unwritten answer to the question - why am I DMing? Now I know - it's for the drugs, naturally.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18031181424520125213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-20013067020135986852014-04-17T12:49:43.273-06:002014-04-17T12:49:43.273-06:00Thanks for the research, Eric. It doesn't sur...Thanks for the research, Eric. It doesn't surprise me at all to find that if my human clan love each other, that encourages us to kill ohter human clans. This isn't the 'dark side' of anything. Another human clan is the most dangerous element of nature threatening me and mine.<br /><br />We're designed to live in groups of less than 150. We actually have physiological limitations that don't permit us to relate directly to a number larger than that. Here's a <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html" rel="nofollow">nice, friendly article</a> from a friendly source that talks about it.<br /><br />D&D isn't played in groups of more than a hundred and fifty (I couldn't handle near that many as a DM), and frankly I don't care what happens to NPCs (my How to Play 10,000 word post directly explains that). No doubt, yes, there's a sadism in it, which is a great seratonin producer - but I'm more concerned with players who get their seratonin by abusing other players, or the DM, than I am about them abusing non-players.<br /><br />We don't know self-play didn't take off. There could be millions and millions of self-players. The only thing we can be sure of is that confession to self-playing never took off.<br /><br />Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-34756866179930236792014-04-17T12:38:23.459-06:002014-04-17T12:38:23.459-06:00http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1447 is a good cou...http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1447 is a good counterpoint on oxytocin's dark side. I've seen players do some really awful stuff to NPCs when a PC's been knocked unconscious; these weren't people playing D&D for sadistic kicks or anything, they felt bad about it afterwards. But in the moment it was "one of US getting mobbed down by a pile of THEM." That being said, that pleasant feeling of togetherness and joint effort is a big reason, to my mind, why solo D&D (and the really huge 20-player games from the 70s) never really took off. Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07649420272387984400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-8738064654091723582014-04-17T12:23:15.987-06:002014-04-17T12:23:15.987-06:00Thanks for this deep post.
a soooo much better pr...Thanks for this deep post.<br /><br />a soooo much better profile of game-player/GM type than GNS.<br /><br />Throw in "exercise, excitement, pain, spicy food consumption, love, and sexual activity" and there's your endorphin chemical reward. LARPing comes to mind for some reason.<br /><br />I'm picturing a 2x2 matrix.<br /><br />This is the real source of adversarial players and DMs.<br /><br />kimbohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12961382206655820923noreply@blogger.com