{"id":884,"date":"2003-09-19T11:43:26","date_gmt":"2003-09-19T11:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/random-average.com\/?p=884"},"modified":"2003-09-19T11:43:26","modified_gmt":"2003-09-19T11:43:26","slug":"but-boats-dont-dock-like-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/2003\/09\/but-boats-dont-dock-like-that\/","title":{"rendered":"“But boats don’t dock like that…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

WISH 65: That’s My Job<\/a><\/p>\n

Does what you do for a living have any impact on your gaming? Have you had occupational details intrude on your descriptions of how something works? Have you ever dared a player to go ?Hotwire a car, then, if that?s how you think it?s done??<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nThere are elements of my life that have definitely impacted my view of some games. With high-tech or sci-fi games, I constantly finding myself using real-life computer tech examples to explain why something isn’t working, why it is working, or how the player needs to manipulate it to make it work.<\/p>\n

Me: <\/b>See, the sensor suite on your ship isn’t the stock module that comes with the ship, but in the hardware config, the system is still set to the ‘default’ sensor suite, so the sensor screen is constantly popping up with ‘COM not Found’ errors, when it works at all.
\nThem: <\/b>Then we’ll install drivers for the right suite.
\nMe: <\/b>That’s<\/u><\/i> the problem: the system can’t detect what the real suite is, and there’s nothing on the hardware itself to give you a clue as to who the real manufacturer is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, this kind of knowledge drives me absolutely batty in some games — for example, when a “Computer Whiz” character is being played by someone who, while a competent computer user, is not and has never been a computer support technician — I just start to twitch when they say “I’ll open up my (US-made) laptop and plug into their (European-based) network. Does that take one round or two?”<\/i>
\nForget shutting down the self-destruct countdown, folks — just getting a valid IP is going to take you a couple hours \ud83d\ude42
\nSolution? I try not to think about it.
\nThis also comes up quite frequently in the (rare) Pulp Adventures stuff that I run, since I play with a number of experts in various fields (at least when compared to myself. That’s proven to be very useful in some cases (“I’ve got a book that details the various advances of the Nazi party throughout the 20’s and 30’s.”) and less in others (“the muzzle velocity between the .45 1911 pistol and a comparable revolver really doesn’t warrant different damage dice”). Sometimes helpful, and sometimes it’s chafe.
\n(In retrospect, I should have set the whole thing in an alternate-history world with a pulp feel<\/i> and less-specific real-world elements. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WISH 65: That’s My Job Does what you do for a living have any impact on your gaming? Have you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}