Aug 27

Aug 27 Covid, Meetings, and D&D

I grew up in the Boston area, and to steal a line from Good Will Hunting, my wife Jennifer is wicked smart.

I’ve always known this. It was the first thing that attracted me to her, and to this day, I have no idea what she is doing with me. It’s not that I’m an idiot, even though I may act like it sometimes. She has always said that we make a good match, bringing things to our family that the other doesn’t. As far as I can tell, I’m the comic relief in the story of our lives, and I play my role well.

I never realized just how smart she is until Covid struck. Like so many other people, she worked from home for over a year, having only recently gone back to split time between home and office. She works in the energy field and is an officer in her company which has over 1000 employees (on her request, that’s all I can say). People ask me what she does, and I’ll give them the title on her business card. Past that, I really don’t know. She has tried to tell me numerous times, but I still don’t know. It’s not so much that it goes over my head, but more like the words bounce off my forehead and out into the universe.

She needed the private place since our kids - like so many others - were going to school over Zoom, so I got the boot from my place of “work.” I am a stay-at-home dad, so I’m used to having a nice quiet house all to myself. That was no longer the case. The running joke is that I didn’t hire all these people so why were they in my office, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay them.

Banished to the dining room, I set up shop every day, did some writing, promoted Dump Stat on social media, paid bills, and all the other things I did daily. The dining room is not that far from the office, and she usually kept the door halfway open. We live in a zoo, having two dogs, two cats, and two kids. The kids usually respected her privacy, but the animals wandered wherever they damn well pleased and would whine outside the door if they couldn’t get in. Once in, they would walk in and out of her screen background during Zoom meetings, bark at the occasional rabbit outside the window, and whine if they got trapped in the office with her. Hence, the door stayed open.

Many of the days, I wore my headphones and zoned out to music while writing. On the days I didn’t, I was privy to her meetings. And there were a lot of meetings. Before covid, Jennifer would tell me how she can’t get any work done because she spent most of her time in meetings. Now I understood exactly how many meetings she had to attend daily. I cannot imagine having to sit through that many hours of people babbling every day. I worked in restaurants and kitchens most of my adult life, and the thought of sitting that long, let alone listening to people talk on and on, hurts my soul.

I learned a lot listening to her and her co-workers talk all day. I still don’t know what exactly she does, but whatever it is, I can tell she is damn good at it. How she keeps everything straight in her brain is beyond me. There’s the work politics, the technical information, the business strategy, and so much more it’s mind-boggling. Whatever she was discussing, and no matter how many people were involved, she could keep it all organized and communicate it clearly. More importantly, I saw (heard) what she brought to the organization. Beyond that, I now understood what her co-workers were like at work and what they contributed. They are all very nice people, having talked to them at various social events, but I’d never seen (heard) them in that setting.

In our house, everyone has a superpower. My daughter’s superpower is talking (she won states this year in extemp speech!), and my son is seriously good at math; he’s virtually a walking calculator. Mine is the power always to get rockstar parking, which is what we call front row parking, wherever we go.

It’s not as lame as it sounds, honest.

My wife’s superpower is the ability to bring people together, and it was full display every week while she was working. There were two distinct sides on the issue at hand in almost every meeting, and in the others, there were three, four, or five different points of view. Everyone acted professionally during these little meet-ups, which was the opposite of how things went in my previous work world. After a few months, I was able to identify the names with the faces of people I had met throughout the years, their personalities, and what their role was.

What does any of this have to do with D&D? As I listened to her co-workers, I realized that a D&D session was similar to one of her meetings. No, I don’t mean boring, and so long I want to gouge my eyes out. What I mean is both settings are shaped by the individuals involved. Every personality in a meeting brought something to the table, just like in one of my wife’s business meetings. Each one influenced the meeting in a certain way and, whether directly or indirectly, impacted the outcome. This happens at our table, but it took me listening to those Zoom meetings over the course of a year to figure it out. I may have said I wasn’t an idiot, but I never claimed to be quick on the uptake.

So what are these personalities I speak of? Here are a few types of people that can be found both in the meeting room and around the table.

The Facilitator

In listening to various conversations, there was always a voice that kept things moving along lest the entire conversation turns into a quagmire of useless information. It usually was the person who called the meeting, but as time went on, I noticed that this wasn’t always the case. I began to see that one of the reasons Jen was brought in some meetings was to sit in the background and speak sparingly. When she did talk, it was to bring the meeting back to the subject at hand. You see, many times, the discussion would go off the rails, with people getting caught up discussing things that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. She would politely interject, acknowledge what the people were saying, its importance in the overall scheme, then get them back on track If someone had a hard time letting the subject go, she would suggest a brief sidebar chat at the end and then steer them back to the real purpose of the meeting. This allowed everyone to feel like they were being heard while keeping the discussion moving forward.

This is the role of the DM. He (I’m sure by now you know our DM is Stephen. Therefore, I’ll be using the pronoun he) sets the table for us not only for the overall campaign but for each session. He doesn’t railroad us into doing anything but helps guide us towards our goals. A gentle nudge here and there is all it usually takes. Of course, we are players, and there isn’t a rabbit hole or red herring we haven’t become obsessed with. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it often leads to some fun roleplaying on our part. If we start to fall into the black hole of useless player ideas, he will clearly state that there is nothing of value in what we are doing without making us feel like idiots. Without him, we would veer off not only the main path but all the side paths, dirt roads, and rabbit trails we could find.

The Logical Person

In any scenario, there is always a person that attempts to solve the problem with pure logic. We tend to think of this person as cold and unfeeling, but that’s not usually the case. Having a clear set of facts that pertain to the subject at hand and using those facts in a clear and structured way will often provide you with a viable solution to your problem.

Remember that emotions are a vital component of any decision, whether in the business world or your game. The numbers may say that you need to re-organize the company and, in the process, have to figure out what to do with 20 employees whose jobs will no longer exist. A logical solution to the issue would be to let them go, solving the issue and trimming costs simultaneously. But there is an emotional cost to that decision that affects not only the people whose jobs are being eliminated but also the entire organization.

In-game, the logical conclusion isn’t always the right one. In many scenarios to murdering the creatures, you encounter in cold blood is the logical decision. Removing them from the equation the quickest way possible results in your getting treasure faster.

Or it’s because you're a band of murder-hobos.

The players may view this as ridding the world of the bad guys, but what about everyone else around them. Maybe it’s townsfolk, or it could be their families - yes, kobolds have families too - or it could be the woodland neighbors in the forest where you make your killing. You may see it as ridding the world of evil creatures, but will they? Hence my wording above. Some will likely see your act of heroism as murder. As players, we tend to want to hit and kill things more often than not, but it shouldn’t always be the default option. I’m not saying you should try to reason with the angry owlbear whose lair you stumbled across, but making a Persuasion check to convince your foe to tell you what they know could limit the amount of blood you spill that day. This, in turn, can garner you goodwill with not only the creature whose throat you didn’t slit but possibly their friends and family.

The Talker

The dreaded talker can make any meeting scheduled to last an hour last twice that. They aren’t bad people, and they fit into two categories: the ones that took forever to get to the point (I am guilty of this) and those that like to hear the sound of their voice. The first needs to be pushed along, the second cut off, often abruptly. Neither ever seem to get the hint that they talk too much.

There were certain voices I would hear during my wife’s meetings that, after a while, were easily identified as talkers. I could almost hear her internal groan, but she always maintained a professional attitude. Any meeting with a talker needed a good facilitator to politely cut them off and quickly move on to the next topic. Sometimes the talker would try to shift the conversation back to finish their long-winded presentation/question/solution. A firm, but again professional, the cut-off would occur no matter if the person was a direct report, a peer, or even a superior. Time is valuable, and having someone waste, it should not be allowed.

At the table, the talker can eat up a precious session time. We are a lucky group, meeting once a week for 4 hours. There is no single person who holds the title of a talker, but we all take turns at various points filling this role. I don’t want a 2-minute explanation of how you landed the last blow, nor does anyone want to hear me talk about, in great detail, what I did during or downtime days. Most of the time, we discuss things as a group, and if one person veers off the subject or feels the need to use all their pretty words, someone will cut them off. Unlike in my wife’s meeting, we aren’t very professional, and we sure as hell aren’t polite. We are all friends, so no one gets offended or mad (usually). Then it’s off to kill some monsters after talking to them, of course.

Some other personalities and roles aren’t listed above, but it’s time for me to stop being the Talker and end this post. As always, I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

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