Current mood:

amused

You live, you learn
We had a meeting on Friday to discuss my objectives for the coming year (‘just set yourself some and let me know how it goes’ Gah! Where are my boundaries?!) and we ended up discussing Myers Briggs which I did years ago and can’t remember for the life of me my ‘type’ - many people I have come across set entirely too much store in these results for my own liking. Often the same people who will vehemently insist that the world cannot be divided in to 12 horoscopes do not see the irony when they ask you which of the 16 Myers Briggs types you are – however they probably do contain a starting point. At the very least they actively advocate different strokes for different folks and we don’t all learn the same way.

I was reminded of this when Rules 3 dropped through my letter box on Saturday morning. This is the long awaited comprehensive new rules set for the role play system I play. They have been out a week or two, but 64 pages are a lot to read on the screen and a little too cheeky to print out at your new work. I curled up with snacks & notebook in an empty, undisturbed house to rediscover the game. Two and a half hours later and only a third of the way through I had to stop before my brain started oozing out of my ears. It was the point at which I had spent five minutes carefully deciphering the call of ‘fatal’ to reach the conclusion it hadn’t changed. The problem is two fold. Firstly, the system has changed, but not drastically, most of the changes to the rules seem to be a translation into the new way of describing things – and of course being so used to the old system I can literally live it – I think this could be harder than if they had changed it dramatically as I keep wanting to translate it back & relate it to what I do know. Secondly, and this is probably far more important – I do not now, nor ever have, learnt a single thing just by reading it. I need to discuss, play around with, try out before a thing sinks home. And I’m far from being the only one. So I think we are in for a very interesting year with some people playing the new system, some the old, and a whole bunch a hybrid between the two.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not for one minute saying this is not a good system, that they haven’t made improvements, and that this isn’t a vastly improved rule book – because I’m sure it is, they have and it most certainly is – it’s just none of that is going to help me understand it.

Talking of learning. Me & H2B continued with the stated plan of stealth exercise by going for a weapons practice Sunday afternoon. Lots of fun as he gets better at controlling the weapons and I get better at defending without use of a shield. We followed this by a stroll about the grounds of Lauriston Castle, which is much underrated and we must do more often. I want to hold a tavern night there, but he reckons it’s unlikely Edinburgh City Council would appreciate LARPers camping on their croquet lawn. What does he know?!