Okay, inspired by the "profiling" thread, I'm kinda curious about something.

What are people's day jobs around here? And how does that relate to your gaming? As much as we immerse ourselves in fantasy, I find our personal experiences in RL color our gaming, if only to determine what we *don't* want to deal with in a game.

I'll start off: I'm a UNIX System Administrator, a contractor for NASA. How does this effect my gaming? I tend to find "hollywood-style" hacking too annoying to deal with in-game, I tend to go overboard on issues like encryption when given a chance, and I hate being forced to solve "puzzles" -- like a cryptogram -- in-game as a player when I know a computer could handle the puzzle a lot easier.

I'll jump in. I'm a programmer contracted out to a school data processing center. I write really dull reports all day. Though it's pretty relaxed and when I'm ahead of schedule I get to slack off more and write to The Forge and work on roleplaying games. On the side, I am a writer and artist (published, even).

How does this affect my roleplaying? I don't have enough time for it. In fact, I had to back out of a freelance assignment recently because I don't have the time. When I do roleplay, I want the most bang for my buck, so I won't go down to the local gaming store and "blind-date" game. I'm friends with the people I game with, and I make sure we're all on the same page. Social Contract is key.

Okay, I'll play...

I'm a children's librarian (at least for a couple of weeks more, then I leave to go to grad school in library science). How this applies to gaming...well, the Forge has helped me solidify what I think the role of the GM is, especially in narrativist gaming (to facilitate everyone creating a story together, not to create a story his/herself & run the Players through it). And in turn, this has helped me solidify what the role of a librarian is (to faciliate patrons finding information, not finding the information for the patron). And the idea of being in an RPG group like playing in a band has helped me look critically at how my coworkers & I interact with each other, how we work together as a team.

If I ever end up as a young adult librarian (which is one of the things I could see myself doing someday), I'd love to start an RPG group at a library. Anything to subvert the youth of America.

I'm an editor for an agricultural Web site and print magazine. I get to do all kinds of stuff -- writing, editing, etc. One of the great parts about my job is getting to to a lot of graphic design, which lends itself very nicely to graphic design experience for laying out / designing all kinds of fun RPG stuff.

Trollbabe is next, once I put the wraps on Cartoon Action Hour! Now, if only this pesky day job didn't interfere with my time . . .

Oh man,

This is so, so close to being off-topic, non-Forge, chat-room stuff ... I mean, I was hovering one millimeter from the keyboard for a pure blast & scorch, don't-even type of post.

Then you said, "And how does it relate to our role-playing." So, I urge everyone participating to remember that this question is supposed to be focused on-topic to this very issue.

I'm a biology professor. This relates to role-playing as follows, in no special order ...

1) One of my academic areas of interest is the human mind as it relates to story-creation and story-enjoyment, in terms of some rather hairy evolutionary perspectives on what the human mind actually is. Enough said on that.

2) I'm faculty advisor for and constant participant at the campus gaming club, D.R.A.G.O.N., and no, I don't take any responsibility for the rather labored acroynym. I get to play lots of games I otherwise wouldn't, and I get to act as mentor to people for setting up their own groups instead of hiding in a scared little clique. So not only am I promoting role-playing, I am promoting a certain relationship of the social/self to the activity as well.

3) Academics, like any other professional activity, is a hodgepodge of common cause and individual jockeying for advantage. It fascinates me that department policy issues and gaming-company issues follow many of the same patterns (as do, for instance, martial arts schools). Parasitism as an economic factor seems to be widespread in both.

Best,
Ron

I'm a teacher in training. I am working on getting my teaching credential but am unsure as to whether I will teach elementary or high school, though I am very interested in alternative education. Next semester I start my student teaching (at an elementary school).

How does it affect my gaming? I have not gamed at any real length for at least six months =(. Because my classes are at night and my group either couldn't or wouldn't play on the weekend I kinda got frozen out. Maybe I should have gone looking for another (weekend playing) group, but one of my links to gaming is that I do it with friends (no "blind-date" stuff as above). What this also could mean is that I need to initiate and run some weekend gaming.

How will it affect my gaming in the future? Well I am a bit nervous about student teaching taking up all my time and energy, but at least I will have my evenings free. The only problem I see is that after this summer the other guy in our group who actually GM's is heading out of the state for law school, meaning either A) I will have to GM or elese no game; B) The combat-monkey sim-head will run Rifts ::shudder::; C) We will have to either find a game or alter our gaming such that we either just do one-shots and lots of people can try their hand or use something like The Framework to lighten the GM-ing load on me.

I'll be honest, this forced hiatus has been tough on me. Before we had gamed on a weekly (or close enough) schedule (except summers before we all graduated) for about 4 or 5 years. Hopefully I can stay organized and on top of stuff and I can GM and student teach =)

-Shane

I'm a Chartered Financial Analyst and running close to $500 million in investment assets for private clients of a bank trust department.

Probably the biggest direct impact my career has on my gaming sensibilities is in the arena of motivations.

By far the two biggest emotions that motivate investors is Greed and Fear. Both of which are the enemy of long term accumulation of wealth.

I see these same motivations at work across the spectrum of role-playing where again they are the enemy of successful play.

Greed manifests both in a power gaming mentality and also as a spot light hog. Fear manifests in a variety of way from reluctance to try new games to lack of trust that the GM won't screw you.

Hello,

I'm a video game programmer. And well, it's kind of obvious how that relates to the broader view of gaming but there's something a bit deeper going on. When I was kid, I really enjoyed Infocom style text adventures and the later graphical equivalents put out by Sierra, Lucas Arts and the like. All through college I was a heavy heavy participant in the online Interactive Fiction community who still turn out old-style text adventures as a hobby.

What I REALLY wanted to do was to essencially remove the railroading and puzzle aspects of these games and create true interactive works of litterature. As a step in this direction I wrote a progam that allowed computer controlled characters to reason based on emotions rather than logic as my undergrad thesis. I went to grad school with the intent of continuing this line of research but I ran into the wall of being severly misunderstood in what I was trying to acomplish. I was buffered around the crowd who were trying to simulate artifical personalities but had no investment in dramatic implications and applications of such technologies and the crowd who was interested in creating art that was interactive but had no investment in the actual user end participation in the CREATION of that art.

Frustrated, I left and got this job working as a video game programmer which ultimately had a very refreshing side effect. It drove me away from computer games and back in RPGs. You see when you MAKE video games all day long, you really lose all your desire to play them when you come home at night. I still wanted to game, but I needed a different KIND of game. My foray back in RPGs brought me here where I learned a lot about RPG theory and realized it was VERY VERY VERY close to my original dreams of trying to create true interactive works of litterature. I discovered that the reason I was so frustrated in grad school was because I lacked the vocabulary and fundamental understanding of what a story really WAS to clearly explain what I was trying to achieve.

I still continue my experiments with my RPG group. Basically, I'm working on understanding on how one creates meaningful interactive stories using live human beings as the computer. If I have a life long dream of some kind it would be to create the world's first Narrativist Video Game: An automated system that would allow the user to present their character (even an assigned character) as a proper protagonist with a theme of their own devising, and would 'intelligently' organize NPC reactions and behaviors to continue to facilitate the presentation of that character.

I hope that wasn't too far off topic as Ron pointed out.

Jesse

I'm a systems programmer by day, which includes a heavy dose of security and system administration as well. All of my work with computers has shown me that the trick to figuring out any computer security or design issue is figuring out the humans involved.

It's affected my gaming by giving me an aversion to mechanical puzzles in the game, of the "press the right widgets in the right sequence" variety (played with a GM who loved them).

I don't want to spend much time dealing with mechanics at all. I get no thrill from it. It's a lot like stepping through algorithms at work. I want to get right down to the human interaction, because that's where the real meat of things is at.

Ron Edwards wrote: Then you said, "And how does it relate to our role-playing." So, I urge everyone participating to remember that this question is supposed to be focused on-topic to this very issue.

I'm a Network Analyst, I deal with PC installs, troubleshooting, networking, security, training, etc... We only have a few people on staff in our dept, so we're kinda computer Jack-Of-All-Trades. I also ran a punk rock / hardcore / grindcore record label and was in a few puncrock bands for about ten years too. (I mention that because it's greatly effected my worldview).

How have both of these effected my gaming? Hmm, I think the most direct result is that I hate having to jump through hoops to game. All of the things I've dealt with professionally are very detail- and process- oriented. So when I game, I vastly prefer short set-up/prep, fast playing / rules-light systems that encourage fun and cooperation rather than rules discussion... 2PAM, Universalis, InSpectres and the card game Grave Robbers From Outer Space are my recent favorites...

Sean

The business card reads "DBA/Data Specialist", the org chart says "Manager, Data Engineering", and the truth is I'm a diverse-but-not-deep-skilled PC-based computer guy, working for a smallish Silcon Valley software (Intellectual Asset Management) startup emerging (with luck) from bankruptcy next month - maybe with me still employed, and maybe not. I've got hundreds of gigs of text, terabytes of images, from patent offices all over the world. And yes, I think that's very cool.

Roleplaying impact? Well, recent events have helped thwart my efforts to start GMing in a big way again, but that's more general life interference than something specific to the nature of my job. The physics of working with large data sets has allowed me to check in at the Forge while at work without it being TOTALLY slacking off (hey, I've got a bunch o' queries running - gotta wait for results anyway), though the managerial responsibilities make that harder and harder to justify.

I suppose some of the personality traits that make me good at my job (an analytical mindset, and, oh . . . an ability to get along with others pretty well) turn out to be useful in some aspects of RPGs, but most of my RPG drive/interest are NOT job related. In fact, a need for a creative outlet in the face of what is (90% of the time) NOT a creative environment in the rest of my life is the biggest influence - so mostly, RPGs help balance out what I would otherwise find an unbalanced life. Maybe if I were a writer/actor/musician, I wouldn't even bother with RPGs . . .

Gordon

I'm a Web Analyst for an Internet Filtering company, which means that I spend 40 hours a week actively and deliberately finding pornography and other "offensive" content and cataloging it for filtering and reviewing specific sites for customers.

It doesn't directly affect my roleplaying. However, all the "surfing" I do gives me plenty of opportunities to read essays, look at photos and spend time developing thoughts and ideas. So the indirect effects can be enormous.

I'm a former public school teacher, former criminal defense attorney now working as the vice-president and writer/designer for a start-up computer gaming company specializing in online games for the PC. I spend much of my time split between management and fundraising on the one hand, and historical research and backstory writing on the other. I'm also an aspiring F and SF writer, but my spare time is pretty sparse these days.

How does this affect my roleplaying? Being an entrepreneur pretty much squashes most of my current gaming opportunities. I spend a lot of time online, so it's easy for me to drop in and check things out at the Forge. Like Jesse, I prefer to spend my free gaming time with the pen & paper medium, but I'm convinced there has to be a way to bring real storytelling potential to computers, hence my interest in virtual communities and interactive storytelling. I want to find a way to break the DnD headlock on the industry's design paradigm. My pen & paper roleplaying aspirations reflect these goals, so the Forge has been an incredibly useful stimulus for thinking outside the box.

As a former attorney, I've spent enough time parsing rules and extracting meaning from convoluted blocs of text. Consequently, I'm not interested in working within traditional rules sets. I prefer streamlined rules that promote coherent scene framing and "cinematographic" details of storytelling, supporting a focus on character, meaningful conflict, and emotional reaction rather than "game." As a writer, I'm fascinated by the whole interactive imagination aspect of group creativity and the ecology of story generation. There's a whole lot of psychobabble I'd love to delve into, but it's best served face to face over a bottle of scotch sometime.

Best,

Blake

Hiya Folks,

I am a psychiatrist, although I must hasten to admit with a stronger clinical rather than theoretical slant to my work.

As you can imagine, this line of work has provided a wealth of ideas. Particularly paranoid and psychotic material that fits in very nicely with many of the games I have run in the past.

A favourite example is simulating psychosis in my players' characters, (when I was much more simulationist-focused) for example by presenting things in such a manner as to seem that they were being observed, stalked, etc. This worked particularly well where there were other non-afflicted characters who were not privy to that presentation and therefore drew there own conclusions about the afflicted character's mental state.
The sorts of games this technique has been useful include Call of Cthulhu, Over The Edge, Unknown Armies and HeroWars (one of my players characters [a repressed Yelmalion, for those interested] is 'cursed' and has been in conflict with a demonic entity).
I have a good knowledge of pharmacology and physiology which have also enhanced my presentation of material to my players.
But the best side-effect of my work is a mounting understanding of how systems of people work together (families, clinical staff, etc) - this fits neatly with the ideas of relationship-mapping-in-gaming that Sorcerer first introduced to me.

Psychiatry is demanding too, and I have little time for gaming, managing only one 4 hour session a week...and this online (as my old gaming buddies have scattered to the 4 corners) by IRC. There are some problems but also considerable benefits to online play of this sort.

I would also flip the question around. Roleplaying games have inspired me to utilise these sorts of techniques (role play) more in my work. It is a powerful tool for those suffering emotional or psychological interpersonal difficulties.

Additionally, I hope to be soon appointed as a Captain in the Australian Army. I imagine this will provide another interesting perspective for my gaming (but also further restrict my available time).

</end self indulgent disclosure>

Rusty

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I, too, am unemployed. Not only that, I collect Employment Insurance, which is slightly different from (and less stigmatized than) welfare. Tomorrow I'll be applying to study for a four-year Practitioner diploma in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Before that, I worked too many years in various IT jobs, mostly at ISPs, and before that, retail and temping. Most recently I was a "Senior Network Administrator (UNIX)" on paper, while actually being "the guy who makes the other admin's lives easier by writing scripts like crazy." So really I'm a sysadmin who did more programming than most sysadmins, or a programmer with a dangerous amount of sysadminning power. :)

I'm system-obsessed, and adore elegance, yet I'm lazy, so I'll often settle for a useable hack. I think in very broad strokes that then need to be made more precise, usually with help from other people. I have what I call a "networked brain"--I think poorly when I'm isolated. I think it's totally silly to talk about "what effect my job has on gaming", or vice-versa; in typical psychological terms, other parts of my life have impacted my attitude toward gaming, writing, and interpreting reality far more than what I do for a living. I'd rather work in the other direction and say what my gaming looks like and trace in the other direction.

My games, as GM, focus strongly on the subjectivity of personal experience, and the salvific potential of ordinary human relations. It's pretty hard not to attribute that to living with a family member who had schizophrenia for several years. I also love to work with the subtle weirdnesses inherent in using symbolic communication when symbols seem to have their own agendas, and on a more ordinary level, my focus on heresy comes back into gaming from studying Gnosticism rather obsessively for a few years while trying to Figure It All Out. Being thoroughly convinced there's no such thing as any actual, sustaining personal self, Author Stance and Director Stance come rather naturally to me. At some point I'd love to play or write a game where the "focus of agency"--basically, in a game, what level of existence you decide counts as a "character" from the WTO down to different sub-systems of the brain a la Society of Mind and Dennett's work--is far more flexible.

Oh, yeah, and being unemployed gives me lots of time to obsess about gaming. Alas, I still get face-to-face fixes fairly infrequently.

--JB

Edit: Oh, and I am looking for a position in a technical college in Vancouver as an instructor. So if anybody knows anybody who knows anybody, do drop me a line. :)

Well,

I'm a long time student...
Having done biology in highscool...
Three years in History in college (what's your name for that diploma ?)
Actually passing a third years in educational engeniring, and I plan to do a MD.

All these studies have had a huge impact on my games. I can't keep myself from using what I've learned durin my gaming. Not obviously, but with some kind of subtlety. frex: I had to play some medieval game with my friend to show them how different things were from modern stereotypes...or the base I get in psychology helped me to anderstand GNS and keep my distance from it at the same time, etc.

I think that basically it gave me some culture, wanting to use the knowledge in my game to make them better.

Not being too pompous, i hope.

Fabrice.

Well,

I'm a long time student...
Having done biology in highscool...
Three years in History in college (what's your name for that diploma ?)
Actually passing a third years in educational engeniring, and I plan to do a MD.

All these studies have had a huge impact on my games. I can't keep myself from using what I've learned durin my gaming. Not obviously, but with some kind of subtlety. frex: I had to play some medieval game with my friend to show them how different things were from modern stereotypes...or the base I get in psychology helped me to understand GNS and keep my distance from it at the same time, etc.

I think that basically it gave me some culture, wanting to use the knowledge in my game to make them better.

Not being too pompous, i hope.

Fabrice.

I do the chef thing.

It doesn't affect my gaming much, except my old gaming group expected me to make the snacks.

For most of the 90s I was a full-time freelance computer game designer, and making my living at it (no trust funds or disability or other back-door income). I still pretend to be one, but now I program as well as design, and mostly educational science simulations (things like exploring the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, or running a Southern Blot in a simulated wet lab) rather than games.

How does this affect my gaming? Heck, it is my gaming, or indistinguishable from it. Simplify and clarify on the surface, incorporate the hidden nuances that lead to unexpected depth, and search for the perfect mechanism to get the point across.

- Walt

I do miscellaneous web maintenance and troubleshooting for the online presence of a publisher of scientific journals, specifically, the American Journal of Physiology.

Sadly, it relates to my gaming only insofar as I often do prepwork for my games during free time (and not-as-free time) at the office.