Gamer Take Away from PMBOK Skill and Action Part 1

PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) an inspiration in talking about and discussing RISK and Occasion to Roll. before we go to risk lets talk about Skills and Actions.

Tentative Outline: 

Skill and Actions Part 1. Key gamer take away: thinking in What performance in controlled conditions and out of Control Conditions. Allows the Gamer or GM to Identify what the Player or Action Automatically succeeds or fails, and What is not up to them but the Chance within the circumstance.

It is possible to commit no mistaks and still lose.

Thinking of Risks as Areas of Control and Out of Control Part 2. Key gamer take away, Players and GM will not just have the ability to improvise problems (by being more conscious of risk) but able to Think-Fractally/or Mentally Scale Problems to Macro or Micro levels as needed.

Skills and Actions

Its the same thing and its not. For our purpose lets say a Skill is a mental or physical Skill a Routine or a Process that can vary in Complexity. Action pretty much the same thing, but when we say Action it means something we can do with Geat Certainty. An Action is a SKILL where the factors is within the PC's/Actor/Agent's Control. 

When we break the idea up to these two components, we have Actions that succeed, but the Objective of the Action fails. 

Example. Trying to Convincing Letter to someone of your cause with writing, vs Putting pen to paper and writing the essay. The Action is Writing - putting pen to paper and able to write.   

Skill is about the Process, Action can also be the Process but focuses on a Process that has very defined paramaters. 

To be Continued. 

Closer Look at Skills and Actions Part 3. (probably burned out at this point). Key gamer take away - how to work with an Evolving Definition of Skills. Your definition of skills WILL change as you go into more intensive problem solving. It means that over time and complexity you will have to redifine your skills and assumptions and update your definitions and how to approach this and allow New Players to Quickly be up to date.

Drafted Outline, that is the Drawing Board:
Thinking of an Adventure and Scope Baseline = Areas of Control + Areas out of Control.

The hard parts, the Actionable Parts: What makes this parts hard? (Practice and Study).  

Identifying the Stakeholders and Risk. 

Identifying the Actions that Improve the Chances to Make an Opportunity. 

Actions are a Resource. There are ACTIONS that influence our chance of success in a given opportunity. 

DILIGENCE. taking the time to Understand and Work on a problem.

Hi Guys I'm migrating to mewe.com/i/justin.aquino

Hi Guys I'm migrating to mewe.com/i/justin.aquino

I'm hedging my bets with Plusplora justinaquino@pluspora.com

Update, out of Practice.

Update that I'm so out of practice I've forgotten most of the things I usually carry around in my head and replaced with work related Game Material. 

 

Basically If its Bureaucracy, Processes, Social Challenges, Leadership, Management, Logistics, etc... I can probably run those kind of games on the fly. 

Of course I'd rather fix my Home brew or GURPS spreadsheet for Modern Games that allows me to generate characters based on Philippine Industry Demographics. 

Most of the projects I want to do thats gaming related would take 200manhours in its smallest phase. I notice after 2-3 months I burn out naturally so I really need to break up projects into 1-3 month phases of usable deliverables.

You can take my last posts and pretty much analyze the trend of how much I've removed from my life my gaming so that I can fix the family business. I really wish one day I can afford to go back. I'm part of the Gen X generation that may end up working till we die, and while that may be a sad thought - i believe sadness and sorrow helps us accept changes and realities we really need to live with or else we will carry that baggage forever and distract us.

Plan-Do-Check-ACt in EVERYTHING - even in Game Systems, and Game System Design

Seeing Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk 2020 it makes me wonder why it isnt an acceptable model to Rewrite a Scifi Setting every 3-5 years updated to consider all the new technology and Trends like a new D&D edition?

It would be so beautiful work of Documentation Management 😅. But I realize people are people and Change and updates are not very welcome, what's wrong with how I do things now? Still its an exercise of creating an Approachable Living System.

Its kinda weird since most Gamers I encounter in G+ are Programmers and Version Control and Iterated Improvements and Rollouts/handoffs are something deeply understood and appreciated. 

So PDCA in Everything - A System for Systems - is a very meta but usable framework in Looking at TRPG systems. TRPGs are not just Games but Playable Models of a Story (or Narrative "reality").

What's wrong of how I do things? Or Whats wrong with the Status quo?
Architecture is a word I encountered in CISP and in BPM that talks about Designing Frameworks - Designing how a System in teaching a Target system (Designing System A, System A is designed to Teach System B). Architecture is the Term for Designing System A. So wow take a breather.

Anyway, so Architecture in Designing a TRPG's Design would be kind of Heavy. But the things Some TRPG Game System nerds think in this way. They can put to writing the system by which they design the system of Developing the User Experience. Tobie Abad's works and his discussion of these works is what reminds me of this. This is Architecture. There is a Wikipedia Article in TRPG Design Theory and there was another book about it - which come to think of it was a great foundation for me getting into ISO, BPM, and other PDCA systems.

So what's the point
TRPGs is a great way to Learn some Key System Literacy skills that is essential in Learning more complicated frameworks and models that deal with real life work. The obsession about it is what allows us to get deeper and deeper into it and seem to see PDCA systems like in ISO or BPM (and the many other Process Frameworks) one of many systems we can understand as we've been given a system framework from TRPGs.

Its great education - its a life skill, and its fun to talk to other Gamers who think in System Architecture and find a FUN use of such  a serious skill. A fun use of a serious skill - how games and play is a strange evolutionary memetic of preparing us for harder problems ahead.

Initial Cost and Running Cost of Skills in Life

So I've been keeping a notebook of my TRPG mental ramblings. One of the Key thing I've gotten into is Decision Analysis for stuff. I realize that the same Decision Analysis for a Car or a House has some parallels to Skills.

Example.
Becoming Literate in Chinese has an Initial Cost. This can come in the form of the Classes as well as the manhours invested.
Buying a Car has its Initial Cost, both in Manhours and Investment.
Getting into Linux has an Initial Manhour Cost.

Then there is a Running Cost.
For a car this can be the Gass, Maintenance, cleaning, parking, etc....
For Chinese its Usage of the skill, See forgetting Curve,

These two costs are a key to understanding Skills, Opportunity Costs in life, and creating a model in understanding what We Put Into pursuits and what can we expect to get from them.

How do I spend my Time is a question I always ask about myself. Its my reflection about what I should expect from myself. If I put my time in Family, Distractions, Skills, Work, relationships, etc... then I can only expect this is what will grow and what will evolve.

In the same way Character Creation and Development follows this basic principle. That What we spend time in is what makes us who we are. That our choices shape us - even our flawed choices (choices out of weaknesses ) shape us. 

Combined with the Scale of Manhours,
Tens, hundreds, and Thousands.

Plus the model Consistency
Reliably (of course exceptions do exist),
Unreliably,
and Rarely to Never

Then add a mechanic for Conscientious Learning - that the Person Identifies with a Skill or a set of skills. That when it comes to this skill - he has some Flow .

And then a mechanic of Building Complexity:
Defining what 10s, 100s, and 1000s manhours means to the Character of a particular pursuit or practice.

Skills, the Pursuit of Knowledge and the acceptance of Forgetting (and Atrophy) of some skills is one of the most troubling and challenging aspects of the Real world that games simplify to make it fun - but when explored is quite satisfying.

I have the components of a Skill System that can be used for a Game but used to Ask some hard personal questions to the Younger me about what I want out of my life. Its easy to Answer for a Character but hard to Answer if it was really being asked of me. But in a TRPG I can explore characters and world views.

I cannot have all the Skills, I will have to choose between some skills in many points in my life, and will have to work with the ignorance of the skill I did not pursue (the inability to make an informed decision). That the world is changing - and that as awesome as a skill may be in a TRPG he real world will create so much noise, uncertainty, and screwed up incentives to devalue hard won knowledge and painful decisions. 

That the world does not care how much you paid for a skill - that it makes you need them but won't pay a fair price for them without a lie or a story. Speaking as a person from the Developing world where you can look out our Education index as see how unfair and inaccessible knowledge is to the rest of our country.

I see it when I have to plan in the scale of years and months the smallest detail of ability for personnel in our company.  That there is so much grift and noise - and skills (and people) are devalued in the machine of the world.

Ideas/musings: Applying Life Lessons in TRPG Design. 10 years of blogging Game in the Brain.

My Work Fuels my TRPG musings, TRPG musings inspire my work.

I know break things down to 5-10mh (manhours), then ordeals of 20mh. Its based on the load I have to juggle at work and how difficult it is to have time to Write and Concentrate until there is greater level of mastery (in the form of Predictability and Systems set up to use this predictions).

A TRPG booklet where I apply a lot of the Gamer Systems Thinking lessons and skills.

An A5 or Statements sized booklet that makes it easy to carry around. Optional and Expansive rules are easily added on physically. Example expansive Character creation tools - allowing for other regions, ethnicity, backgrounds, etc... modularly designed. Designed with a particularly LOAD out in running games or with Phones in mind.

Handbooks is something that work has migrated towards. Particularly Pocket sized handbooks where I work. When I need to transmit a body of knowledge - like Material Handling (Inspection of Delivered Goods, Their Custody, Care, and Reporting on their COnditions, security, and Quality), to Basic Project Management, and other Skills that people do not have the Luxury to Study but I have since I'm the (child of the Owner and a Gaming nerd that is skill obsessed). Its strange Listening (using an App to read to me the text and my brain learning to recognize context despite the robotic nature of the reading) to all these books and textbooks and picking up applications and uses of some of  the skills and learning What skill covers what.

Small Pocket sized Handbooks is a remnant of a lower Technology Level that is natural for an Emerging Market of the Philippines - that is needed even when Phones can contain all that data. It is that mixed nature of Technology and the World where we have Analog and Digital despite creeping closer to 2020.

Revolving around this is the Analogue skills of Note taking and writing. The ability to write with the barest and most basic of tools. This is an inportant skills because Writing is still one of the best techniques, a thousand manhour pursuite, that allow us to train our thinking. Blogging and Writing constantly is a Valuable skill - since you have learned to express yourself in a way Everyone (especially yourself) can Pick Apart the Thesis to Learn from its Flaws. A BAD IDEA stays a bad idea until it can be viewed objectively in context with a Ton of Other Data.

I want the Character sheets are not sheets but Notebooks and a note how to plan, layout, or arrange the Stats and the character's goals, experiences and progress. Its basically the kind of note taking you would eventually have if you were religious in note taking and approached everything with a PDSA/PDCA. A skill for your character but also for yourself - how you take stock of your status in life and how you plan for the pursuits and challenges that lie ahead.

I have a sprained wrist right now. This is kinda painful to type.

So yeah I'm in a many year hiatus because I have to fix the family business - as I'm in a strange position of Using a ton of skills I learned because of gaming and applying that Gamer Approach to life. I learned to do Costing, Bill of Materials, Bill of Scope/Scope of Work, Analysis, Tables-Data Arrays, etc... from Gaming in TRPGs. Its weird how "Fun" it is to enjoy a textbook when one grows up with TRPG books.

I'm in a weird position coming from a nouveau rich family - in the emerging market of the Philippines - and to see the wild untamed worlds of Philippines and my neighboring regions  as well as Studying Chinese and China. Because of the 0.61 education index - that incredible skill gap and unstable conditions of an Emerging Market - its a strange time to be alive and to look at the world. We are a generation different from the Technology Literate world and we are playing catch up - and so much resources are concentrating around various people who can either abuse it or enrich those around them.

been blogging since 2003, and this blog is practically 10 years old since I started this branch of my life at 2008. You can see pretty much the evolution of studying arcane gaming stuff evolve and escalate to practical skills.

Hi from my Hiatus

I have two kids now and I'm trying to turn around the family business, which by experience (of those who know better than me) takes about 3-5 years. So I'm definitely not able to game for the Longest Time - probably in the next 5-8 years.

I hope to be able to Say Hi, time to time from my hiatus.

Some musings.

1. Following the FB groups about Romans and Medieval groups, the very active ones, I realize the Roman Tech (and thanks to De Agricultura) is pretty much a wealthy source of Low Tech Economics and Business Models to understand the times and the limits. Also they have awesome photo albums or Naval Pictures and Diagrams. 
2. My Work is giving me inspiration for Games and Games inspire my work (I work as a Director of a Design and Build Furniture and Construction company). Particularly the models and mechanics that let me run a Fun Logistics Puzzle Games, and the uncertainty of human organizations. I work like a prep heavy GM that is unafraid of improv and has a focus on feedback with the players. 
3. I definitely will need to run Warring States 200-500BCE China. The Diodochi series of Christian Cameron and my Chinese Studies have given me a great appreciation of the Time Before the Roman Empire or the Qin and Han Dynasty.  I'm able to see the Technological Parallels of the Roman Empire and their Eastern Counterparts in a way they are similar with exceptions that can be used to Model other such levels of organization. 
4. The Human Era 10,000BCE or seeing everything from the perspective of the most Ancient Monuments in Turkey - that we are 12,017HE puts the 200-500BCE the 9500-9800HE. That they Great Bronze Age collapse is just the 8500-8800HE. That humanity may have had other levels of organization from 0HE to what we were able to dig up. That there are still an amazing set of things we are able to do prior to Metallurgy. 
5. That Aging Penalties were a Buzz Kill that I have to accept now that I'm nearing 40 and i am able to monitor and document the decline of my physical performance. My median performance is more stable and better in some cases, but the limits I can push them have decreased. Its not that I've become weaker -its just I learned how much pointless damage I'm inflicting on my body. That It takes more effort (time in the day) to maintain my health than when I was young and I wasted it. That every excursion (like an airsoft game) is a risk of some injury that will give me pain for a long time, while sitting on my ass and playing something for 4-6 hours straight is not a luxury I can afford (given how my joints and body reacts when not active).  
1. Basically I learned the long term effects of periods of Youthful exuberance, mindless of safety and the long term costs.  
6. if I run games again, that it would be 40-50 minutes increments with a Tabata/Pomodoro Timer and have 10-20mins to move around, freshen up, and take notes. My Session planning will be based on those time units. 
1. I would want to record them all. 
2. A strategy of Cutting and Editing a Game session for ease of viewing.