It seems economics is in the air everywhere these days. Just when we got past the Fiscal Cliff, we were plunged headlong into a land where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting three people with the word “Sequestration” coming out of their mouths. None of those politics will be discussed herein. That’s not just because this is ENWorld. It’s because I am way less concerned with the impact of those things on my daily life than I am in my personal economics.
When I talk about personal economics, I don’t just mean money. Certainly, as has been recently discussed here, paying attention to money and my budget is important and a very positive influence. But there are lots of things we trade which have nothing to do directly with money. The “Price of Admission” is paid in many types of intangible coin. More on that in a minute.
I was really pleased to see so much feedback on my column last week about fitness. It gave me a lot to think about and many of the comments sparked ideas I never saw coming. It’s also caused me to reflect on the fact that, while I generally coach people to engage more in the activities they enjoy, I don’t enjoy regular exercise.
I enjoy many of the products of exercise. It makes me feel good having done it. I feel disciplined. I feel healthy and alive. I even feel a tiny tingle of gamer accomplishment when I log my workout into Fitocracy. But while I’m running? Not really enjoying it. I’m just powering through.
There are lots of forms of exercise I do enjoy. I like hiking. I like swimming in the ocean, riding waves for hours. I even enjoy certain chores which require physical activity like splitting firewood. But these are very situational and that is the enemy of consistency. I need consistency in my exercise to assure I get the healthful benefits from it. So I mostly run on my treadmill inside where most other factors can’t influence me to skip my workouts.
I don’t get a thrill out of running on my treadmill but I have come to accept that the 30 minutes or so I spend doing it is the Price of Admission for all the benefits that exercise produces. So I pay that price willingly and without whining a lot about the fact that it isn’t particularly interesting. That’s what is really key about the Price of Admission: Once you have opted to pay it to get the benefits, nobody really wants to hear you moaning about it.
From a fitness standpoint, you have other options. I mean if you want to not exercise at all, you could try to control your weight more through diet. If you go that route, people would probably tire pretty quickly of your constant griping about only eating green beans and rice cakes. If you don’t want to exercise or diet, that’s also fine. The Price of Admission to that easy lifestyle is you’re probably going to be overweight and ultimately suffer some health problems. If you’re willing to pay, fine.
I try to apply this same philosophy to my gaming environment. My gaming group stays pretty conscious about our individual styles and the big Venn Diagram where they overlap. We attempt to do most of our gaming in that “sweet spot.” Sometimes we opt for games that are at the edges of that sweet spot or even outside of it. When that happens, we are put in the position of questioning whether we’re willing to pay the price of the game being at the fringes of our tolerance.
For example, one guy in our group doesn’t particularly like boardgames. We don’t play them all the time but especially when we’re having a bit of downtime between campaigns we often opt to spend a few game nights with some of our favorite boardgames before we are ready to launch into our next RPG. We are all aware this one player isn’t terribly keen on such games so we try to select games he’ll likely get some amount of enjoyment. But sometimes he will simply opt to sit out a session when he knows that’s what we’re doing. He is saying, “The Price of Admission for tonight is a little steep for me. Have fun and I’ll see you next week.”
That’s a great attitude. I mean it’s completely fair for him to have let us know boardgames aren’t his cup of tea. And we’re all friends so we make a point not to play boardgames three weeks in a row such that we’re really taxing his ability to have fun at our game nights. Just last night he told us he can’t make it next week and we’re on the cusp of playing some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 3e we know he’s looking forward to. So we said, “Hey we’ll push off the start of that campaign by a week and play boardgames instead while you’re gone.” Win-Win.
Occasionally, personal economics change a bit and shift your priorities. We’ve had numerous times in the past when a player was “babied out” of a campaign. This happens in our group the first year or so after a child is born into your family. Suddenly you’re short on sleep, need to help out more around the house, etc. Certainly it’s important to still have fun but other priorities are higher and this often means you feel you can’t afford the Price of Admission to a weekly game night for a little while. Again that’s fine and nobody has hard feelings.
Interestingly, it gives the rest of the group a moment to consider if they are willing to pay a higher Price of Admission to keep that player in the group. More than once we’ve changed our venue to game at the home of the player with the new baby (probably after the first few months). Allowing them to cut out the transit time to the game might shave enough off of the Price to allow them to participate. And we’ve recently done some similar schedule changes, moving our standard game night from Wednesday to Tuesday, in order for a player to accommodate his kids’ schedules that evening.
I think the key is we’re all being honest about what we can afford to pay. And nobody is being a drama queen about it and trying to act as though their time or schedule is more valuable than everybody else’s. We understand the Price of Admission and we pay it or we don’t. Any further whining about it is really just fruitless noise.
What activities do you have to pay a Price of Admission for? Do you feel the payoff is big or small for that price?
When I talk about personal economics, I don’t just mean money. Certainly, as has been recently discussed here, paying attention to money and my budget is important and a very positive influence. But there are lots of things we trade which have nothing to do directly with money. The “Price of Admission” is paid in many types of intangible coin. More on that in a minute.
I was really pleased to see so much feedback on my column last week about fitness. It gave me a lot to think about and many of the comments sparked ideas I never saw coming. It’s also caused me to reflect on the fact that, while I generally coach people to engage more in the activities they enjoy, I don’t enjoy regular exercise.
I enjoy many of the products of exercise. It makes me feel good having done it. I feel disciplined. I feel healthy and alive. I even feel a tiny tingle of gamer accomplishment when I log my workout into Fitocracy. But while I’m running? Not really enjoying it. I’m just powering through.
There are lots of forms of exercise I do enjoy. I like hiking. I like swimming in the ocean, riding waves for hours. I even enjoy certain chores which require physical activity like splitting firewood. But these are very situational and that is the enemy of consistency. I need consistency in my exercise to assure I get the healthful benefits from it. So I mostly run on my treadmill inside where most other factors can’t influence me to skip my workouts.
I don’t get a thrill out of running on my treadmill but I have come to accept that the 30 minutes or so I spend doing it is the Price of Admission for all the benefits that exercise produces. So I pay that price willingly and without whining a lot about the fact that it isn’t particularly interesting. That’s what is really key about the Price of Admission: Once you have opted to pay it to get the benefits, nobody really wants to hear you moaning about it.
From a fitness standpoint, you have other options. I mean if you want to not exercise at all, you could try to control your weight more through diet. If you go that route, people would probably tire pretty quickly of your constant griping about only eating green beans and rice cakes. If you don’t want to exercise or diet, that’s also fine. The Price of Admission to that easy lifestyle is you’re probably going to be overweight and ultimately suffer some health problems. If you’re willing to pay, fine.
I try to apply this same philosophy to my gaming environment. My gaming group stays pretty conscious about our individual styles and the big Venn Diagram where they overlap. We attempt to do most of our gaming in that “sweet spot.” Sometimes we opt for games that are at the edges of that sweet spot or even outside of it. When that happens, we are put in the position of questioning whether we’re willing to pay the price of the game being at the fringes of our tolerance.
For example, one guy in our group doesn’t particularly like boardgames. We don’t play them all the time but especially when we’re having a bit of downtime between campaigns we often opt to spend a few game nights with some of our favorite boardgames before we are ready to launch into our next RPG. We are all aware this one player isn’t terribly keen on such games so we try to select games he’ll likely get some amount of enjoyment. But sometimes he will simply opt to sit out a session when he knows that’s what we’re doing. He is saying, “The Price of Admission for tonight is a little steep for me. Have fun and I’ll see you next week.”
That’s a great attitude. I mean it’s completely fair for him to have let us know boardgames aren’t his cup of tea. And we’re all friends so we make a point not to play boardgames three weeks in a row such that we’re really taxing his ability to have fun at our game nights. Just last night he told us he can’t make it next week and we’re on the cusp of playing some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 3e we know he’s looking forward to. So we said, “Hey we’ll push off the start of that campaign by a week and play boardgames instead while you’re gone.” Win-Win.
Occasionally, personal economics change a bit and shift your priorities. We’ve had numerous times in the past when a player was “babied out” of a campaign. This happens in our group the first year or so after a child is born into your family. Suddenly you’re short on sleep, need to help out more around the house, etc. Certainly it’s important to still have fun but other priorities are higher and this often means you feel you can’t afford the Price of Admission to a weekly game night for a little while. Again that’s fine and nobody has hard feelings.
Interestingly, it gives the rest of the group a moment to consider if they are willing to pay a higher Price of Admission to keep that player in the group. More than once we’ve changed our venue to game at the home of the player with the new baby (probably after the first few months). Allowing them to cut out the transit time to the game might shave enough off of the Price to allow them to participate. And we’ve recently done some similar schedule changes, moving our standard game night from Wednesday to Tuesday, in order for a player to accommodate his kids’ schedules that evening.
I think the key is we’re all being honest about what we can afford to pay. And nobody is being a drama queen about it and trying to act as though their time or schedule is more valuable than everybody else’s. We understand the Price of Admission and we pay it or we don’t. Any further whining about it is really just fruitless noise.
What activities do you have to pay a Price of Admission for? Do you feel the payoff is big or small for that price?
