Been Busy. Using Game Material for Learning Important Skills

My excuse is pretty valid. My baby boy was born and I don't have internet access outside work (and I'm on my paternity leave).

More on the topic of Gaming. I need to brush up on my accounting as work gets more complicated. I have moved to walking distance from work and now that I'm baby sitting some times I need to have some sitdown hobbies which can unwind my head, especially since I am now sleep deprived.

So I plan to create some income statements, with Accounting for Dummies (which is lighter and more portable than my accounting studies book since I'm only after reviews and exercises) and two very usefull Game Books: Traveller and Harn.

Contrary to popular understanding of Accounting, it is not just for Cash it can be used to account for Man Hours of Labor and types of goods used like Cash.

What would be useful to any gamer who wants to hone some important real world skills, handling and experience with Financial Statements, is to have it as part of the game. I've done this before when I became the book keeper in a Traveller game.

With accounting you need exercises to experience using the tools (like the acid tests, ROI, etc.)and it can be fun especially when the Player is trying to do some accounting "magic" for a game (like how entering capital, such as a space ship as Capital with depreciation or as an expense, and how it can affect the margins).

I got the idea of making more Accounting Examples from Harn Manor. The final product of a generated manor IS an Income Statement dressed up in Game Rules. This gave me the idea, what if I can doodle away some of my time balancing the books of Manor. Realistically these books are never as detailed as modern day equivalents, but it is a story telling exercise as well as an understanding of the process.

So Harn Manor, given some random variables and some tweaks can be a Income Statement Generator for various "Entities". I have yet to figure out how usefull in a game is a Balance sheet, since it focuses on Equity, a more legal and difficult to sort aspect to be put into a game.

How I wish there was a website that had Traveller and Harn Manor exercises, low-tech households converted into GURPS allowing the creation of other House-hold estates of different cultures and eras.

In which I would spend maybe an hour a day generating a House hold, which is a set of npcs, establish their economic relationships, and noting down other aspects of relationships while brushing up on my accounting.

If not a low-tech household, a ship enterprise for Traveller. Showing the different examples of financial strategies reflected by the characters preferred method of business. I guess here a Balance Sheet is important since it will settle matters of equity between Partners/Corporations.

[Damage Theory] Arrow Penetration Discussion

Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Arrow penetration

The use of the book Williams The Knight and the Blast Furnace in Arrow Penetration.

Useful in making a better damage model for arrows and small projectiles.

Damage Theory Tables, as Promised; Open Game Design Notes

Earlier when i started blogging again, i promised that I will be looking at damage more closely. I'm interested in brushing up on my physics through it, just basic physics, i don't have the time nor the materials that would allow me a deeper look.

Here is the Damage theory tables made public. Its very bare and I only have a few entries. I'll let people edit, as well save private copy for myself if any vandals would come in. I've not begun being more specific, and most of my sources are from wikipedia. To make up the missing Joules value, I've made the excell sheet calculate it based on projectile weight and muzzle velocity.

The intent of the Damage Theory tables (there will be other Sheets, it is a Google Spreadsheet) that will be made to look at Arrows, Spear and Javelin throwing (by using Athlete performance data),

I will also have one column dedicated to Sources and Citations.

The intent, like my previous work, is to make the data available to hobby game designers who want the means to develop a better fire arm resolution system (for both table top, board game, miniature gamers etc.

I'm not that great at the math or the physics, but I'll put in stuff when I can. I think over time I'll have a few more entries to put. Strangely Google docs have a strange twist on Game Design, particularly Open collaboration and Note-sharing.

Open Game Design Notes. whats hard in game designing is the research, finding the data to model what we want for a game system. Because it is supposed to be a simple system, the complexity of math is near layman averages. That makes game designing, for me, attractive: I don't have to have great math, and I can improve on my math as I grow dissatisfied at how much compromise I made, because of the lack of ability, which drives me to study up a little bit more, depending on what time I have available.

I think I'm not that far off the mark, to think many amateur game designers have a ton of notes. those who try to model a particular kind of event or interaction, will have written many different rules, scratched them and began work from the ground up. I have 20lbs worth of old browning notes still being kept for the sake of appreciating my geeky past.

I think if one looks at the total of all their game design notes give both a narrative in scientific proficiency and story telling adaptability. Still there are some lessons, I'm sure not just myself fail to learn and consider in the next great idea, as well as many brilliant ones lost in the frustration and mess of all these notes.

So we have a ton of blogs, Open Game Notes. How about open game sources and compiled research? I'm sure often, there are those of us who have a great Idea but reality gets in the way to finish it. Some of us, don't really want any monetary reward for the idea or the contribution, some just want that Social Exchange or Social Norm. The satisfaction of the idea, mostly finished (except for our own little and personal touch) by the help of others is probably enough for some.

The problem is if those some, or most probably tiny few, can find each other and keep in touch with their own ideas and contributions.

What to write about, since LT is out

Plans for Game Writing. Low Tech being out and probing the forums as to any future releases regarding any material that work on the details I find important in telling the story. Details that help illustrate the underlying organizational mechanics for running Mass Combat and major Operations. I think this is important, well its important to me, in the least. Since there seems to be no one else interested and I'm the only one interested, then I guess it is not market viable for GURPS to pursue. I guess that leaves me to make them, despite how confusing the opportunity and the lack of support in the direction I want can make me feel.

News is that the next Low Tech add-on is Instant Armors, by Dan Howard. I do like having several tables for armors in detail and transmitting some last minute corrections that didn't make the cutting room floor. Although sadly thats it.

My personal need is making Mass Combat more useful and easier to use. Again I like the idea of working with Land Assets which was partially covered by Hal's thread, and method of drawing up villages where key strategic details can be used, either at the level of village or the level of the Principality or the Fief (group of villages).

So I find myself looking forward to some real material to write about. At least if I'm not gibber-gabbering about "Meta" stuff.

Personal Load outs Levels of detail, particularly drawn out of historical sources or infered because of biometrics, necessities, and context of survival conditions. Particularly when applying survival skills, terrain, and personal logistics to the load out.

Larger Organizational Load outs. Squad level equipment and larger organizational levels and their equipment is something that is not tackled and I don't think will be. I'm getting more into it, because I'm trying to reconstruct historical scenes of great war leaders and powerful households because of my experience in being part of a "house hold" as well as drawing more from Archeological sources that detail the household, with the emphasis how the household affects organization and limitations of adventuring or major operations.

One of the interesting things I realized from my work is how I have to visualize every part of the steps I'm going to do, because I have to communicate it to my superiors through presentation, and that in every step where I don't know what I'm doing I have a method or time to ask questions and draw from someone else's expertise.

Personnel and Retainers. This is something like Load Outs, but in terms of People: it answers the question: What are the Expertise or Experts I need to accomplish this Action Plan? This is really drawn from work again, drawing from the projects I've been tasked to do and finding a pattern to the kind of experts employed and the limitations of multi-tasking (wearing so many hats).

I plan to draw from Historical Texts and work forensically from military organization at the time, as to speculate what could it mean by having certain experts. I find this ability to look at a group's organization and find how their tasks and responsibilities are organized a skill for both gaming and real life. For gaming, its really helpful in looking at Entourage, Commes (Companions), Power distribution among peers or near equals, and Households.

Free Download @ e23: Running A Game Publishing Company

e23: Running A Game Publishing Company

I have not finished reading it, but I'm kinda hoping to doing something similar, a publishing company that makes critical thinking material in the vernacular. My dad gave me, what was supposed to be my brother's Idiots guide to business plan. I've made business plans before, for Traveller (LOL). I also learned a lot and began to like accounting in Traveller, when we were trying to make the ship as profitable as possible. (we ended up diluting ship shares to make up for lost income :(, better to fail in an RPG scenario than in RL ). My dad dropped off Bed and Breakfast for dummies on my desk, which is also interesting, particularly because of GURPS low tech companion 3, when many the GM's in the forums are trying to digest income generation rules and look into the details of how these low tech business work. So now I have the basic accounting examples of an Inn; in Business Plans for Idiots I have late 90s pay scale for administrative jobs and typical Financial Statements and Business accounts. (I just have to fill it up with Traveller related businesses: A mercenary company, a merchant ship owner, a freelancer, etc)

Interestingly the material and the training are like game sessions. BATNA exercises are designed like RPG scenarios and are run similarly. These allow people to be trained in keeping their wits intact when they are facing tough social situations or a more skilled negotiator.

Using RPGs to make life better for people and foster the critical thinking skills. Specifically Communication and Negotiating training (useful in Sales and Customer Care), the highest job attrition because most training focuses on quick sales and meeting quotas instead of giving the people an array of improved coping, conflict resolution, empathy, and improved communication skills. Hence when these people hit frustrating circumstances and they are left there without adequate support or structure to improve and make the experience a character building exercise, so they don't recover from it as often.

The average Filipino has 8 years of education and the government can't provide the later education needed for them to go beyond business that depend on microfinancing (borrow $20 in the morning, pay back $25 in the evening) or be able to form more sophisticated and stable cooperatives (in a pure game theory perspective, one needs better communication or information dissemination to have better checks and balances, and to keep everyone on the same page).

In games and gaming, visualization is one of the key aspects of any implementation processes. In RPGs we do it in make believe and the GM throws the wrenches in the works, but in real life we have to do the RPG processes of visualizing the course and have the GM's monkey wrenching around as an automatic reflex to obstacles in order to quickly adapt, act and react. It also codes the right emotional reactions: Caution when things are going well, and Optimism when problems come up ("I see what you did there").

Wow, it seems growing up with gaming books created a kind of mnemonic memory devices when it comes to games, and if I can relate it to business.

IQ or Wits Check; Fallacies and Cognitive Biases

What are instances where PCs make an IQ check? Asking that question, I've come to observe how often people make IQ checks when someone is pulling a fast one on them.

Here introspection comes to help observe reality and model it for the purposes of an designing a Game. Ok my gamer blog has been "meta" of late, I can't help it because growing up RPGs have given me the basic tools to Model what I observe or how understand things work, and strangely pushed me into the rest of the Empirical Method by refining the technique of Modeling Reality as effectively and fun as possible.

Back to the Topic: IQ or Wits checks. Now if you pick up a list of Cognitive Biases or the Fallacies, and look at how people effectively follow the method of analysis one begins to notice gaps and leaps in reasoning that is not all that strongly funded.

Sorry if Philosophy can be boring, but let me get this out: It can help one ask the right questions. Philo makes us be aware of Assumptions, Epistemology, Context, and "meta" thinking process terms. This awareness, or for me appreciation, brings to light how often we make leaps of conclusions using rather weak evidence or proof, or purely intuition.

Ok to the gaming part. When your aware of these weak leaps that everyone, including myself, can't someone take advantage of that? One of the basic methods of gamers is looking at things and asking questions to help discover weaknesses to take advantage... and basic operating cognition is pretty susceptible to manipulations.

I apologize for the strangeness of the topic and its relations to gaming, I've been reading "The New Sales Methodology", basically a Sales Book that talks about "Old School" Sales and how much it tends to be Fast Talking. So the New Sales "theory" is to get rid of Fast talk, so in order to do that, it has to Identify how short-sighted and what is fast talking or BS persuasion.

So this is where my interests, my work and my hobby collides: The frailty of the mind and how understanding it allows the GM to create more instances of Wits Checks.

An example.

Confirmation Bias, is pretty much talked about in DnD regarding Bluff and in GURPS regarding Fast Talk: How much the listener wants what he's hearing to be true. If you've read up on Confirmation Bias then checked out the Fallacy: No True Scotsman, Shifting Goal Posts, Cherry Picking, etc. one begins to notice that when someone is in Denial no amount of convincing will ever work.

In this case, this calls for a IQ or Psychology check to realize what the Character is witnessing is Confirmation Bias in someone else or a Will and Psychology Check at -5 to realize the PC being Biased, catching himself/herself. The will check may require an external stimuli to for the character to have cause to reflect.

What is strange looking at these Biases or Fallacies is that, realizing what skills come into the characters defense. How vulnerable is someone to attacks that prey on their biases? How much margin of success allows the "attacker" to come away without the "sucker" even knowing or not figuring things out until much later.

Law (Trial*)

Psychology (Biases)

Philosophy (Argument, Logic)

I'm an Emotional Intelligence proponent so I'm all for negotiation and Role-playing to help develop conflict resolution, negotiation, and communication skills. I realize these tools: the Fallacies and the Biases, help to create more realistic models of social situations.

Looking again at the Confirmation Bias, what if the "King" or powerful 3rd party, won't ally with the PCs because of a number of biases: the King wants to believe there is no problem, that his sons are not plotting to kill him, that all the accidents he's survive are mere coincidental.

Whats worse: the array of Red Herrings arguments the Villains can use to discredit and muddy the waters for the PCs. A real spectacular villain is one that can be within the PC's reach but they can't do any harm without ruining their greater good goal.

If you are aware of leading questions and speculative arguments, then you realize how one is able to verbally damage credibility without even saying a single falsehood. These two: leading questions and hypothetical arguments/Speculative arguments when employed (and often are employed by politicians or anyone who wants to manipulate grounds of morality for their cause) are really scary because regular people save at -5. You NEED Philosophy (argument) or Law (trial) to argue against it, and because these two arguments can be so effectively ladened with emotional rhetoric, it is easy whip a crowd into a frenzy or to drown out all reasonable or rational argument.

You need a judge to point this out, but even a judge can't convince the mob effectively.

Hope this is informative.

*trial lawyers are a Philippine Specialization of Lawyers, specializing in argument.

GURPS Effort Levels. Real World Character Building?

There is really no aggregate system for Effort Levels in GURPS, if you want one, you would have to take the Running and Hiking rules and work off of that. I've talked about Fatigue and GURPS a lot before.

• B426 Fatigue
• Physical Feats in B350
• Hiking in B351
• Running in B354

Heart Rate and Effort.

One interesting thing I stumbled on in the measure of effort is Beats per Minute, BPM, or Heart Rate. BPM is one of the symptoms that can actually track effort and stress.

In stress, BPM measures levels of alertness in response to flight or fight responses. So it makes sense that when the body is preparing to fight (anger, desperation, etc.) or flight (fear, panic etc.) the muscles of the body have adequately provided for a bust of activity.

If you take the Running rules in B354 and apply it to "universally" as basic system to track effort levels in GURPS this will provide an added dimension in challenge. the problem is that we don't know how other actions can be tiring. What BL multiplier over rate of movement will cause X amount of fatigue? In this case BPM will help indicate where you are in the rate of FP loss ranges.

BPM also makes me realize some other contributing factors to effort and energy.

• Coffee increases BPM and is used as a Diet tool and to increase Alertness and Concentration. Voluntarily raising mental activity level can be very hard, especially since many things people do are not exactly self motivating (thus naturally inducing the alertness and slightly elevated BPM level).
• Meditation, Breath Control skill and Autotrance can be used to alter BPM, allowing a person to relax more quickly or rest more efficiently. Although slowing heart rate is not advisable when the body needs the resources, although voluntary raising it along with breathing control is an exercise in swimming and running that may help in allowing the body to shore up resources for an explosive action. Maybe a bonus to an extra effort task.

GURPS and BPM. I plan to use BPM to examine fatigue levels, looking into other tasks not just running. One question that needs answering is "If BL is the weight a character can lift over their head with one hand from a resting position, how many times should the character be able to do it consecutively and at what FP rate of loss?" A person trying to impress would use extra effort to prove that he fits XST score (24lbs for 11, 29lbs for ST12, 16lbs for ST9 etc.) the effort level will help settle consistency.

Typical At rest BPM is 60-80.

• BPM at Rest is of course Resting and Mentally at a leisure state. (Typically 60-80)
• BPM at Rest x1.15 is very light exertion, this is a Mentally alert state.
• BPM x1.3 Light Exertion 1FP x Enc. Modifier per Hours
• BPM x1.6 Moderate Exertion 1FP x Enc. Modifier per Minute
• BPM x1.8 Heavy Exertion 1FP x Enc. Modifier per 15 sec.
• BPM x2 or greater, this is Extra Effort levels.

Overall Look at Effort. I was wondering what increments or multiplier would be more effective when measuring effort. In GURPS its 1 second, 15 seconds, 1 minute, then 1 hour. thats x15, x4, x60. I was thinking a more reasonable straight progress of time would be more useful.

16 Waking Hours. This is affected by fitness levels and sleeping condition. Those who are affected by sleep apnea depending on severity don't get to recover as much or any energy at all.

Some of those who underwent Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty surgery have highly improved sleeping situations of those who suffer sleep apnea. Some being able to sleep only 6-4 hours. Thats 2-4 more waking hours per day, if that goes into time for catharsis or personal investment it free's up more time for other things.

4 hours of consumption intervals. This depends on the diet, those who have tried going vegetarian will notice the shorter consumption intervals. This is a simple experiment you can try on yourself, especially when your diet requires you not to go hungry at all (to prevent the body from "storing" resources in fat).

Here is an alternate rate which I plan to develop into a more comprehensive system. Its in multipliers of 4-ish. I fudged it a bit, but Its to make it easier and simpler to use:

• 1 second; @ Greater +100% BPM
• 4 seconds; @ +100% BPM
• 16 seconds; @ +80% BPM
• 1 minute; @ +60% BPM
• 4 minutes; +35% BPM
• 16 minutes; +25% BPM
• 1 hour; @ +15% BPM
• 4 hours; @ +0% BPM
• 16 hours

Save Based Systems. In a save based system in every effort level there is the same but cumulative penalty that makes a fatigue inevitable. In a system like GURPS it is the Total Fitness and Athletic Bonus (Fitness HT bonus, Athletic skill with HT).

Experiment:
What if Crawling: Stealth + HT + Fitness modifier at a BPM of +60% would be a cumulative -1 penalty per minute. In a Margins of failure determines current state of fatigue. Recovering from the fatigue condition depends on the amount of rest.

What if I used the realistic Injury rules in Martial Arts 136, for torso here are grades of Fatigue. What if Resting and recovery reduces the accumulated penalty.

• Fresh and Alert
• Fatigued -1 on all physical and mental actions - failure by 4 or greater
• Very Tired -2 on all physical and mental actions; 80% movement - failure by 6 or greater.
• Exhausted -3 on all physical and mental actions; 50% movement - failure by 10 or greater.

Another Topic but it relates to Gaming, particularly Character Creation... kinda.

In another topic, reading up on Dan Arielly again I begin to realize the Habit Programming through the understanding of the science can be an interesting "real world" Character building tool. Professor's Hinshaws ending note on the "developing a personal narrative" makes me realize that when writing down one's own thoughts, emotions, experiences and mental process, we begin to understand the behavior we exhibit from a more objective and 3rd person view. Using one's own narrative as a way to identify key habits and behaviors and applying ways to manipulate one's own cognitive biases/irrationalities for a more successful or healthy life.

The problem I see though is the effort it takes to accumulate data to process one's own behaviors requires a habit of writing one's thoughts down, despite how silly or shameful they may be. the best or only evidence anyone will ever take about their own faults is from their own hand. The most convincing words are our own words, after the event has passed and we have come to a different and distant state of mind to make a 3rd person or a more objective assessment.

The tools have been around a while, now its more readily available and easier to use and research. Investing in one's self and building up a "kick ass character" is not anymore for just the character sheet, it can be or IS the reality.

RPGs have helped Identify behaviors and try to exercise our empathic sides to play the Role. The more seriously one takes role-playing, the more aware one becomes in their ability to adopt behaviors and understand motives. We learn motivation is the key driving force, the combinations of quirks and mannerisms are accidental traits a product of the uniqueness of the experience, and one's background are the tools the person has in achieving and reasons for their goal.

After a while of this, maybe we would start having a more objective and less flattering "sheet" of ourselves and maybe start looking at those stats figuring out the most Min/max strategy to pursue for the best possible and sustainable utility.