ariels / personal / ariels 16:10 (You know you're a gamer if... your gamer friends read "you know you're a) It's a little sad to realize that I could probably be really amazing at my job (rather than merely solidly competent) if I was half as passionate about it (and willing to put a commensurate amount of personal time into it) as I am about GMing. That said, it's *tons* of fun to get paid for an hour of brainstorming about riddle trails. And I feel all kinds of competent and useful now. ariels / personal / wings 16:10 (I can talk to yourself in whatever person she wants. - shawest (as wings)) You got paid for riddle trails...? ariels / PERSONAL / chope 16:10 (The Harvard Spy in Your Midst) I realize that occasionally. ariels / personal / cdhill 16:10 (Notice if the suspect eats foods he/she ordinarily loathes.) I feel a similar way. If I cared as much about my job as I do about my run, I'd be amazing. Right now, I just want to make sure I don't kill my project by accident. ariels / personal / wings 16:10 (Yeah, the past was perfect, except how it led to the present. - Homer Simpson) Also, ariels / personal / kevinr 16:11 ("Period military is not the dress code of a straight man." --Owen) Yeah, but some of the reason you care so much about GMing is that it's *not* work. ariels / personal / ariels 16:12 (Hufflehobbit) There's a project at work that managed to finagle funding for a Diversity Game that is going to hopefully encourage people around the company to interact with coworkers not in their usual circle. It's part augmented-reality-game, part mystery hunt scaled down tremendously. And I am now officially in the project leader's circle of Trustworthy and Competent Gaming People. ariels / personal / ariels 16:12 (Please keep hands and feet inside the car until the plot has come to a) ...... *looks at the amount of effort put into the HP7 series* *looks at kevin in complete disbelief* ariels / personal / wings 16:13 (Hey! No homophones on -c wings! You Are Welcome Hear! - geofft) Caring about not-work more than work is not universal ariels / personal / cdhill 16:13 (Check for emotions that seem out of place, especially anger.) Yeah. The people who put in crazy long weeks and are in love with their lives are those folks ariels / personal / cdhill 16:13 (In a pinch, boiling water is a good Blighter deterrent.) I wish I could be one, but I'm not. ariels / personal / ariels 16:13 ("Septimus, what is carnal embrace?" ) I believe you about that with regards to chocolate. At the end of a serious chocolate run, my response is often "Ugh, why do I do this again? Why would I want this to be my full-time job again?" At the end of a ten-day, I am insane and sleep-deprived and would drop my job to get paid to write games in a heartbeat. ariels / personal / wings 16:14 (I was a simple girl with an evil plan. - Wilhelmina, Ugly Betty) I mean, I've seen people who love their work and are still balanced about it :) It's hard, but not impossible ariels / personal / kevinr 16:14 ("We're Torchwood, have you heard of Torchwood?" "What's this, some sort of band?" --Gwen, police officer) Ariel: I mean it's not work-work. I know the monumental amount of time you put in. :) ariels / personal / brians 16:16 (Brian Sniffen) I wonder how much of that is Sawyer's Rule: that there are few parts of game-writing that you are obliged to do, in part because you have team-mates for whom the parts you don't want to do are fun. ariels / personal / cdhill 16:17 (Blighters can and will eat your pets. Keep pets indoors.) Sawyer's Rule? ariels / personal / ariels 16:17 ("It was God!" "We had a flamethrower." -- the logic of Conspiracy Theories) Not that much anymore. I've picked up all kinds of crap I'm not comfortable with and don't prefer because somebody needs to do it. ariels / personal / kevinr 16:17 ("Have you ever eaten alien meat?" "Yeah.. well, he seemed to enjoy it." --Gwen, Jack) And there do exist people who are in love with their jobs, which is good. But, speaking for myself, I find that doing things for pay changes the nature of those things, and often accentuates the parts that I like least. ariels / personal / brians 16:17 (Brian Sniffen) Work consists in that which a body is obliged to do. Play consists in that which a body is not obliged to do. ariels / personal / brians 16:18 (Brian Sniffen) I've found that as my work involves more management and human interaction---and more political scheming---I'm less interested in GMming tabletop games. ariels / personal / kevinr 16:19 ("Have you ever eaten alien meat?" "Yeah.. well, he seemed to enjoy it." --Gwen, Jack) For example, a big part of what I like about GMing is that I'm doing it for people who are friends or at least part of my greater social circle, and doing it for pay might mean that that was no longer true. ariels / PERSONAL / tibbetts 16:19 (Boston. NYC 3/28. Brooklyn 6/18-20.) I really like my job, roughly more than any of my hobbies, though I could imagine tweaks to make it a better job. I find a lot of parallels between the parts of GMing and gaming that I liked at my job. ariels / PERSONAL / chope 16:20 (The Harvard Spy in Your Midst) I'm pretty sure that there's psych research that getting paid for something reduces your enjoyment of it. :-/ ariels / personal / kevinr 16:20 ("Period military is not the dress code of a straight man." --Owen) I am taking to describing GMing as "project management: the hobby". ariels / personal / brians 16:20 (Brian Sniffen) On the other hand, writing and running *guild* games is more like what I imagine some parts of a startup to be: very tight focus and full immersion for a defined period of time. ariels / personal / xavid 16:21 ((Exeunt - leaving ROS and GUIL) ROS: I want to go home. (The NPCs are Dead, X-Games, ~5/18. Quoting R&GaD.)) wings: Write more riddle trails! ariels / personal / ariels 16:21 ("Friends will be friends." -- Queen ) I am currently considering a proposal for a security-training LARP. I haven't pinned down enough details to be sure it would work yet (of the practical variety), but the idea of GMing for total strangers at work actually sounds like a blast. ariels / PERSONAL / tibbetts 16:21 (Boston. NYC 3/28. Brooklyn 6/18-20.) WIth luck, there isn't an end to the defined period of time. :) ariels / PERSONAL / tibbetts 16:21 (Boston. NYC 3/28. Brooklyn 6/18-20.) I like that I keep going back and fixing things, rather than "finishing" a project at some artificial deadline. ariels / personal / kevinr 16:22 ("Torso o' steel, shillin' a feel, any takers?" --Jack) Ariel: I could see ways that that could go badly, but I hope that it works out for you. :-) ariels / PERSONAL / tibbetts 16:22 (Boston. NYC 3/28. Brooklyn 6/18-20.) personally there is also a decoupling between my work and getting paid. Not sure if that solves the psych researched problem. ariels / personal / ariels 16:22 ("These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based ) chope: I totally believe that. But I wonder whether I'd still enjoy it orders of magnitude more, and thus be noticably better at it, than my current job. Not that anyone is going to pay me to be a full-time larpwriter, so it's not like this could *happen*, but... ariels / personal / kevinr 16:22 (KB1QEF) They might pay you to be a full-time PM or other leader-type person. ariels / personal / ariels 16:23 ("May the Force be with you." "And also with you." -How to identify a Catholic geek, from Dex Lives.) ....yeeeeeaaaah, probably not any time soon. And I suspect I'd hate that. ariels / personal / ariels 16:23 (Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.) The full-time part, that is. Although I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. But solving technical problems has always been the part of my job I've liked most. ariels / personal / ariels 16:25 ("Friends will be friends." -- Queen ) (The last project that I led exploded in a shower of politics. This was only partially my fault, but it *was* partially my fault, and I'm not expecting to get offered leadership of anything that I don't start myself anytime soon.) ariels / personal / brians 17:07 (Brian Sniffen) I've been running security training larps here. 5 instances in, it's working okay. I'd be happy to talk about what's working and isn't, if you'll help me see what isn't working and what is. ariels / personal / ariels 17:07 ("One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occured) I'd be happy to.