Profiling Day Job

[Lance D. Allen]

I, ::dramatic pose:: work at Denny's. It's only real effect on my gaming is that, as I work nights, it fairly drastically reduces my available gaming time.

Prior to this, however, I was a soldier in the U.S. Army. That effected my gaming immensely. First off, I *know* how the military works, so anything dealing with military organizations in game, I have certain insights to. Exactly how this would effect my gaming is nebulous, and would depend greatly on the situation. I also have at least a basic grasp of tactics, moreso than before I joined the military (combat manuevers teach a few things) which, when playing with other equally knowledgeable players (esp. other soldiers) means that combat plans are likely to be complex but neatly executed, even if sometimes our characters wouldn't know how to do such. Which brings me to my next influence.. I often play martial or military-based characters, who *would* know how to use the knowledge I have as a player.
However, the bigges influence the military had on my gaming was diversity. I met and played with people from all walks of life and creeds. My vampire group was made almost entirely of people who'd never gamed before, and as such, had no idea of gaming traditions. They did what they want with complete abandon, often to my dismay and delight.
Nextly I met gamers who *were* experienced, but whose experiences were much broader than my own. They taught me the value and fun in taking archetypes and twisting them. The primary influence in this way was a friend of mine, Eric, whom I may have mentioned from time to time. He brought me the Pleasure Mage from Shadowrun, the Pagan Paladin from D&D, and a whole host of interesting characters and ideas for Star Wars (3 GMs, 3 games, but OH the gaming anecdotes!)

I consider myself both a better and stronger person, and a better and stronger gamer from my time in the military. Other than that... I work at Denny's. What did you expect?

[wyrdlyng]

I am a Computer Technician for a state-wide power company. I also maintain several of our internal websites. As there are primarily 3 people covering an entire state I also spend a large amount of time on the road and staying in hotels. Before that I worked at  bank for a short time. Curerntly I'm trying to go back to school for a degree in Computer Animation.

Gamign wise I have learned a lot from my work that I carry over into games.

1. I know how an "evil" corporation works. I know the forms of political pressure they can apply on local, state and federal governments (I've been hassled for a month to contribute to our corporate political action party fund and they keep giving me more literature telling my how it would eb good for the company. As I am against 95% of what the company believes I have yet to break.) I know the structure of corporate networks, typical security protocols, the hassles of keeping security over a wide-area and intra-company network. From talking with folks in the field I've learned a lot about electrical relay systems (I talk to a lot of linemen and repair crews.).

2. From working at the bank I learned a lot about how banking systems work. I could go into a lot more detail but there's a lot and I doubt anyone would care.

3. From trying to back to school I've been refreshed on the wonders of ineffecient beauracracy.

In games I've used all three of these areas of knowledge (such as the Office of Records in a recent D&D game or the years of Shadowrun I ran). But most of all I've learned that forced behavior patterns are irritating and thus am moving more towards giving Players directorial power.

[Tim Denee]

I'm a university student studying anthropology and philosophy (but changing to design papers next year).
Anthropology is a fascinating tool to look at 'cultures' and socities in role-playing games (especially fantasy ones that take themselves seriously). Since I've discovered what simulationism is and gone off it, anthropology has had less relevance.
Philosophy, in relation to role-playing games, is (I think; I haven't actually tested this yet) handy for coming up with premises for narrativist game design/play; all those burning questions with no real answers.
If I was still taking the maths papers, they'd be good for gamism and I'd have my bases covered...

Oh, and I hate pretentious students who wank on how smart and current and mature they are, spewing forth crap about politics et al. So, I love role-playing games that are honest, fantas-tic, and, if possible, have a child's heart. Or, at least, are damn fun and that's all there is to it.

[Balbinus]

I'm a lawyer working for a Wall Street firm, I specialise in the financing of major international infrastructure projects and telecoms financings.  It has no impact on my gaming at all, other than occasionally causing time pressures to interfere with my social life.

Well, one thing is that because of what I do the economics in my games tends to be better than most, but economics doesn't come up often enough for that to make much difference.

[AndyGuest]

Yet another IT person here, contracted out to Shell, currently carrying out the inane task of attempting to move software from one set of almost obsolete servers to a brand spanking new set of servers that are slower, flakier and getting no assistance from the people we are trying to help (moi ? bitter ? ;-))

How does it affect my gaming ? Not in the least, well apart from giving me the money to fund my game purchases and plenty of opportunity to surf gaming sites at work while waiting for others to do things...

It also makes me wish I was working in my great interest which is history / archaeology. Now -that- influences my gaming tastes a hell of a lot.

[Mytholder]

Blah Blah IT Blah Web Blah Not Enough Free Time Blah Aspiring Freelance Blah Humbug.

Back when I was in college - a whole two years ago - I was heavily involved in gaming societies and convention organisation. Running and writing stuff for cons gave me a lot of practice in one-shot games and short scenarios.

[rafael]

i work in state government.  before that, blockbuster video, waiting tables, telemarketing, busting rocks with a sledgehammer, IT, web editing, technical writing, cashiering, and testing video games.

thing about work is, it helps with GMing modern-setting campaigns.  i remember trying to do it back in junior high, and just not having any kind of understanding of what life is like for people that work for a living.  coming up with vocations for superheroes' secret identities, for instance.  sounds silly, but it's true.  varied work experience has made me a better GM in general, i think.  the people you meet, things you think about when you're on the job, trying to make a living.  changes your perspective.

[contracycle]

Well, I work in a crisis management centre group for a global networking company, handling major network outages and production stoppages for European operations.  Its a "fire brigade" role and so either relaxed or full-bore, as a rule - this gives me a fair amount of surfing time when its relaxed.  Before this I did a fair few years of 1st line support and this has has an effect on my gaming - I'm very conscious of the fact that two people looking at the same thing may see different bits of it as significant, and describe it in very different ways.  This is endlessly confusing when you cannot both see exactly what you are looking at and you need to adopt a specific methodology for working around the problem.  I think the clash of perceptions in RPG which can occur between participants is a similar process and I look for equivalent methodological tricks to solve what I see as a similar problem.  As a member of a Trotskyist organisation, I've also done my tour of duty as secretary of a 30-strong local branch which has given me a lot of insight into the mechanisms of coordinating group activity and distributing division of labour and so forth.  This is relevant when I'm considering social structures for design purposes and how they relate institutionally to one another and to their constituent members.

[Matt Gwinn]

I am a "graphic designer/copywriter/web designer/computer tech/product designer/book editor" for a sporting goods manufacturer/distributor in Ann Arbor MI.  They pay me poorly so I can't afford to publish my game or buy other's games as well or as often as I'd like.

The good thing is that I have a lot of time to goof off online and work on gaming stuff.  Having a couple grand worth of computer software at your disposal makes game prep and game design a lot easier.  It also allowed me to design and print up the ashcans for Wyrd last year for close to nothing.

,Matt G.

[Bob McNamee]

I'm a Tinsmith at a Steel Mill.  Formerly a shoerepair manager and an communications electronics techinician in the US Air Force.  Also an artist and woodcarver.

The biggest way this impacts my gaming is time restriction on the negative, and on the positive, the inside of different types of organizations and exposure to a bunch of real-life "characters"... and boy do you get 'em in a steel mill...

Bob McNamee

[Mike Holmes]

I am a Statistician/Programmer/Analyst for a company that does Electronic Funds Transactions (EFT; you know, ATMs and POS terminals, etc). Please do not ask me where your card is, that's not my department.

While this makes me very similar to many here, there are two major differences. First, I have a lot of time during the day (duh), due to having programmed several people, and almost myself right out of labor intensive jobs. Mostly I am here to make sure it does not all fall apart. Second, I like what I do and take it home at night. Which is why I like to do all the statistical analysis for systems that I do here. It's just like another little assignment across my desk, a little challenge to figure out. I like noodling with system stuff.

I also have a military background, having spent fifteen years in the National Guard. All this combines to make rigid hierarchies and solid rules really attractive to me. Explains a little, no? Oh, and I feel that I should mention that I lived in Madison, WI at UW for eight years, and still don't have a degree. Too busy gaming, you see. Despite having a family and working 40 hours, somehow I still find plenty of time for gaming (doing 12 hours of Europa Universalis this weekend, woo-hoo!)

Mike

[Jason L Blair]

I'm a Production Editor for the Health & Environmental team at a legal publishing house. The job bores me to tears and eats away far too much time. On my off-time, I put off doing game-related work including contracted material, stuff for our inhouse games, games designed purely for fun, designing websites, and updating my three domains. Sometimes I manage to squeeze a few thousand words out. I usually celebrate that by being attacked by my chinchilla and my two dogs.

This all impacts my gaming by not allowing me any time to actually play games. Though I do plan on testing a new (non-collectible/trading) card game I've developed.

[Emily_Dresner]

I'm a senior software engineer for a computer security company who delights in separating morons from their cash and occasionally (very) builds a handy-dandy security product to help you find the scum of the Internet and say, "Yup, that's scum a'right.  Right there."  You too can get into intrusion detection technology only to discover that the NID doesn't defend anything, it just points out air-sucking chest wounds!

One major effect is that I refuse to play Cyberpunk games.  "Blah blah blah l33t haX0r blah blah blah system hacks blah blah blah."  I know its all just a big pack of script kiddies, so it's no fun anymore.  

The other major effect is that my little engineering hive mind tends to impress rigid rules of order on everything around me -- and years of studying bizarro languages forces my conspiracy-heightened wits to pick out symbols and messages from the most unlikely places.  When approaching a project, I like to cut everything into very small, managable pieces and fight with it until it looks like something acceptable, either in designing a game or running it.  My primary academic background is in operating systems (writing them, not using them) so I am very keen on fundamentals that work a priori.  I don't like confusing rules, or messy rules, or bad layout, but I do like creative approaches to strange problems.   I'm terribly picky, so I'm often disappointed.  I don't buy too many RPGs anymore.

[Paul Czege]

I am an Editorial Technical Trainer for a reference publishing company. Basically that means I help editorial project managers learn and use both custom and off-the-shelf software applications (MS Access, Excel, PageMaker, parsers, OmniMark, Adept Editor, etc.) to manipulate and manage editorial data. Gordon's self-assessment of being "diverse-but-not-deep-skilled" applies to me as well. I report to an editorial team leader, not to a IT manager, and I'm located among the people I support. Most of my work is one-on-one with colleagues at a point of crisis for them, so I very much inhabit the teachable moment. It's a fantastic job.

How it affects my gaming? I have time available for The Forge most days, but just how much really fluctuates with publication and data delivery cycles throughout the year. I have access to an awesome corporate reference library, as well as to every single one of the rather pricey online databases of full-text periodical, reference, and newspaper content that we sell to universities and libraries. I guess I could leverage that stuff into some impressive Simulationist world-building if I was so inclined.

But mostly I think my gaming has influenced my career more than my career has influenced my gaming. I started at the company doing lowly indexing work, and moved through various editorial project management roles by relying on problem solving, creative thinking, group management, communication, and leadership skills I developed during my high school years jockeying for significance in game groups.

Paul

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Thank goodness someone works for Denny's. I was getting tired of the IT bods. =)

I'm unemployed. Quite enjoying it, too, thanks fer asking. Previously, I've had a couple of tedious administrative jobs, worked in marketing, worked in a theatre, and before that, worked as a cook.

So how does being unemployed affect my gaming? Well, it gives me a lot of time to *consider* gaming. It also means I can't afford to buy many games, so writing them makes a lot more sense.

I don't define myself by my unemployment, however. I'd be more likely to think of myself as 'Game Designer (Unpublished)', but even then, it's not a big part of my self-image. Managing a teeny marketing department for about a year did show me how my games could be better organised. Previously, they'd been slapdash.

And without a doubt, the verbal, linguistic, and interpersonal skills I've developed as a GM have made a difference to my job prospects, a little like Paul above. GMing various fractious convention games has helped my skills as a trainer and manager, for example.

Joe.