Game in the Brain

Edit: On further reflection I decided to change the summary or title to Hard Fun. Hard fun as meant to discribe the pleasure from some normally torturous  exercise like a 21k, studying a 500page textbook, writing thousands of lines of code, doing the history research for a GURPS game. That the body of knowledge – which we don’t feel because its been conditioned into us allows us not enjoy this difficult and painful task.

In GURPS we wanted more Simulation and more Detail. So many of us Simulatioinists went out to Create that level of Details by Getting GURPS Low Tech, Martial Arts, and Mass Combat.

What was something I could measure was how long it took me to learn HEMA styled realistic Combat in GURPS. In Roll20 it took about 3-4 1-2 hour sessions just to get a hang of the options. Note that GURPS Combat Options are dizzyingly plenty – I made a whole blog post about the amount of Options and Analysis back in the day.

Those blog posts, those session, the workflow Diagram I made, and various other studies contributed in allow me to Run GURPS as HEMA near smoothly. I believed I needed 1.5hr x 5 more hours of Combat Sessions and probably 5 more revisions to have had probably covered 99% of the topic.

That was just HEMA, I focused on logistcs, Training, Estate-management and Warfare as well. I had a long way to go and had a lot of notes and studies about it. Every Revision and every rewriting was improving on the model of understanding.

This is in GAMING and right now I’m using these Lessons in much of the PROCESS improvement in the Company. I just had a threat that such improvements would be vetoed – on a whim – without looking at our teams data or any argument against it – so you can understand the kind of position I’m in.

I can talk about my Chinese, Business Process, Corporate Finance etc…but this is what I discovered before all that and what shaped my mind. What I can vividly remember most is this episode of studies years ago and how much most of My life was greater and greater level of Authenticity – my High School term paper was about the 200 years war influenced by D&D 3rd Edition Revised book on weapons and combat options.

The BODY of Knowledge in Decision making takes Time, Study, Documentation, and WRITING. The act of forcing someone to write what they learned – forces their brain to put it in to MEASURABLE and STABLE data on a medium that can weather time. Reading our understanding of a Process is Stopping Time and going back in time to the Person who wrote it and understanding this is what he knew in that time.

Take Away

• It would take 40-120mh to develop a level of Detail or Running a more sophisticated game but it would be worthwhile if one was young and had the time. It would be a project based exercise of what it takes to make a smooth procedure. 
• That because it is soo hard to do and so niche I don’t recommend this normally – unless this is what you want – thankless work only to create a Mindspace in your head that can perform this calculations on the fly. 
• Getting people to think HMA, Logistics, and HMA is the hard part but very rewarding – alone its a struggle – with someone or a team thinking this way is euphoria. Sharing a document where all the teams experiences and knowledge is re-consolidated in light of experience is euphoric.
• Edit: This is HARD fun. and you have to be both Stupid and Lucky to have gotten into it. The only people who are stupid and lucky are those who are open to new experiences and genuinely seek them out to reevaluate their lives and thinking.