It's All The Same

            You would think that, given the opportunity, the majority of people would try to improve life – at least to the best of their ability. However, for some reason this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is an element to this related to the fact that those with the ability to bring about change don’t see the need for it, while those who want change the most lack the means. But, if this is the case, why do we see the same thing reflected in our fiction?

            With few (at least, comparatively few) exceptions, our fictional worlds tend to function remarkably similarly to ours. Oh, the names of everything changes, but there’s almost always some form of monetary system and a hierarchy of who is in charge – be it a democracy, meritocracy, theocracy, monarchy, or one of any number of other types, there is the familiar leadership structure.

            Now, there are reasons for doing this. Familiarity is important to help people be engaged with the content. If it isn’t an integral part of the story, having a consumer learn and figure out a whole new structure for a society is tedious and unnecessary. So, what people already know is what gets the most representation, which is fair – but I’ve noticed something else, as well: if people are given the option in a factional setting to make things different, they still choose to go with the familiar.

            The first example I have of this is the Dungeons & Dragons campaign I’m running. It’s set in a world I created with the specific intention of allowing the players to have a lot of control over how their society would develop. They were put in a situation where they were building up a civilization, where they were some of the most influential people around, and where there was no monetary system because everyone was struggling to survive. Did they try to influence their government into taking a new, potentially better structure? No. Did they try to create a new system of bartering? No – in fact, they specifically wanted the familiar monetary system and, through actions based on assuming it would resurface, accidentally caused it to re-emerge.

            Now I’m seeing the same thing again in Chronicles of Elyria. This is a game designed to be almost entirely within the control of the players – they run the governments and control the economies, laws, and the research. It is perfectly set up for people to test new ways of doing things, and yet... All these people who are setting up governments are setting up the familiar governing systems (to be fair, these are partially built into the game’s feudal system), planning for the same familiar capitalistic monetary systems, and planning on law systems that reflect our own.

            I don’t fault them for any of this – it’s all very practical – but I can’t help seeing these scenarios and thinking, why are we just doing the same things over again? Why are we reusing material that, while it works, we know it doesn’t work well? In the real world, I understand – change takes a lot of time, investment, and risk in the real world. On the other hand, in a game, when given this much ability to build and design how the world will function, there is far less risk. Why do we fall back on the same old dysfunctional systems?

            Familiarity is the key, I believe. It’s familiar, comfortable, and easy, so that’s how we choose to do things. We know it isn’t perfect, but at least we know what to expect. It’s all very sensible, of course, but we’re missing out on trying to find a better way of doing things. If we can’t be bothered to find a better way in our fiction, how can we expect to find a better way in our reality?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Rush Hour

            On my way home from a convention today, I found myself being passed on the highway by every other vehicle. Not just the occasional ones that is normal for me – usually there’s a mix of some passing me, me passing a few, and most going the same speed as me – but all the other vehicles. I wasn’t driving slower than usual, but I did realize this was rush hour. And I started to wonder why it was that everyone was in such a hurry that they would risk speeding tickets (and not small ones, either).

I figure that part of the reason is that most people don’t know how useless speeding actually is. If I look back to times I was in a particular hurry, I found that at the fastest speed I was willing to drive (admittedly not all that much over the speed limit – what can I say? My parents owned a driving school when I was growing up) I managed to shave a whole five minutes off a drive of more than an hour. That’s really not worth the trouble.

But then, I realized, it was unlikely that these people were all on a schedule to get somewhere. Not in the evening. They were most likely going home. So many people, rushing to get home – risking speeding tickets and, judging by the speed, the potential to lose their licences to get home.

            And I realized that what was most important to them was the feeling of getting home as fast as possible – the feeling that they had stolen a few more moments to spend time with their family, work on personal projects, play video games, or do whatever it was they want to do with their lives.

            So many people feel like they don’t have enough time in their lives – and let’s face it: they don’t. There are some extraordinary people out there who can balance professional and personal lives and be perfectly happy, but I don’t think the average person can. Otherwise, why would so many people daily risk the severe consequences of driving dangerously just to scrape a few more moments of time to themselves?

            It seems that I have added yet another reason to my belief that the average work weekshould be cut in half (with the economy adjusted to accommodate it). Not only would it improve mental health, make people happier overall, and increase the number of jobs for the workforce, but it would make people safer drivers because they wouldn’t feel like they had to rush around to have enough time to spend on what they want to do.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Easy Way

            My goodness, is it ever hard to come up with something to write about this week. My brain seems to think that, since I cheated on my blog last week, why not this week? Of course, the answer is that, if I did that, soon I wouldn't have any new blogs.

            It makes me think back to video games I used cheats to play when I was younger. The first one that comes to mind is Age of Empires. For those of you not familiar with it, Age of Empires is a medieval RTS (Real Time Strategy) game. That means it’s a game where the player controls an army and moves it around the map, fighting your opponents armies in real time (as opposed to turn based, like RISK or Civilization). At the same time, resources are gathered and spent on buildings, research and troops.

            Not long after I started playing the game, I was introduced to cheats. These were commands I could type to do things such as give me special units, kill all my enemies or give me free resources. The only ones I used very often were the resources ones – it saved a lot of time waiting for them to be gathered and let me build things much faster. It also made it impossible for the computers I was fighting to beat me.

            I actually thought I was good at this game.

            At some point in time, I decided I should play the game without cheats and discovered I couldn't. Without those free resources coming in, I just couldn't keep on top of my army well enough to beat anything harder than the “easy” computer. In the end, I always had to return to typing “powpowpow” about twenty times and destroying my enemies with my army of bazooka wielding, tricycle riding babies.

            The same sort of thing happened with Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III, also known as Skyrim’s grandpa). That game was hard when you started playing it. Before you raised your character to a decent level, worms could kill you. Luckily I once again was given cheats, which made it so I could actually play the game. Unfortunately, once again, without those cheats I can’t play it at all.

            Cheating makes everything so easy and our brains are wired to do everything the easiest way possible. Once we know there’s an easier way, it’s hard to go back to the harder way. But there’s something we don’t realise about cheating until it’s too late – and that is that enjoyment doesn't come simply from winning; it comes from overcoming a challenge. Those games I mentioned? I don’t play them any more because they aren't fun if I cheat and my brain gets mad at me if I don’t take the easy route and cheat.

            Just so it’s clear that this doesn't just apply to video games, in elementary school I was the biggest cheater ever in the game 7 Up – and I was never caught even once. In this game, all the kids hid their heads in their arms on their desk while seven kids that were “it” went around and each secretly tagged someone. Then the seven kids went stood at the front of the class while the seven tagged kids guessed who had tagged them. If they guessed correctly, they switched with the person who was “it”.

            Cheaters in this game were easy to spot and call out because they had to lift their heads to see who tagged them. Then there was me. I figured out that if I positioned myself just right, I could see the floor and, consequently, could flawlessly pinpoint my tagger by the shoes they were wearing.

            After cheating made this game boring, too, I was able to use this skill to always choose the wrong person so I didn't have to leave my desk and participate more.

            Games are meant to be challenging and so is life. There’s only one thing that cheating and taking short cuts achieves and that is getting something done. But just getting something done isn't enough, because if it isn't done properly it becomes empty. Cheating in games makes them boring. Cramming for a test so you can pass leaves your head as empty as when you started. Stealing things makes them worthless. Taking the challenge out of life makes it feel dull and meaningless.

            So, get out there and challenge yourself. Do things and do them right, because in the end it’ll feel more rewarding and you’ll find you've accomplished far more. I know I did and I ended up with a pretty good blog post.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.