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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4872870" data-attributes="member: 54707">I've got both of those books. One for my daughters, and the other for the boy we are going to adopt.This may be a little off topic but your comments reminded me of how "integrated" my gaming hobbies were with everything else I did. When I was a kid I was constantly on the move, doing something. My parents encouraged this, and it is my nature anyway I suspect. I'd rather be dead than bored. The constant refrain in my household was, "go do something." Though I rarely had to be reminded to tell the truth. My old man ran his own business, raced, played ball till older, was involved in several groups, charities and fraternal organizations (still is), was reserve military, helped run the church, farmed, built things like our house, etc. So I guess I got some of that from him.If I wasn't playing ball or sports (I played football, soccer, and baseball, and ran track or distance) I was out in the woods, where I spent a good part of my childhood and teenage years. (I was also a Boy Scout by the way.) Or I was in a CAP (Air Force Auxiliary) exercise or SAR mission, or taking trips, or in science camp or down at NASA, or fighting with my friends or camping out or playing games, or reading, or writing, or on my ten speed or riding motorcycle, tracking animals or hiking with my dogs, or something. It was really hard to just sit on my butt and do nothing. The idea of watching TV was something you did if you were injured sick, or the weather was bad, or you just had nothing else to do.To me all of the things I did, work or hobby, gaming (like D&D or Risk or wargaming) or sports, they were all "adventures." Part of my childhood "campaign," though I wouldn't have described it that way back then. I would have juts said, "all the things I do."The idea that there was some artificial line of demarcation, separating real world adventures from imaginary ones, well, it just didn't seem real to me. And it never really occurred to me because I didn't think in those terms. It was all one long process of the same thing, only the particulars and methods of execution varied. I honestly saw things like wargaming and D&D as encouraging or feeding real world experiences (I didn't think I would have bothered if it was just a diversion with no real world connection to me), and vice versa. I don't know why this thread and your comments made me think of that, but it did. Maybe that's another reason I never thought of imaginary "adventuring" as a series of disconnected fights or encounters or dungeons. We did on occasion "practice fight," have little encounter tournaments. But that was just practice. The idea of D&D being a series of "disconnected encounters" just never would have occurred to me. I'm not saying I think badly of the idea, it's just not the way I was raised or had trained myself to look at the world. To me it was all adventure (in the widest sense of the term), it was all connected, and it all had some kinda larger purpose.Like I said the idea of disconnected, separate encounters (separate even from a module or dungeon), when I read about it in this thread, as being the norm of play in a role play game, well, it kinda shocked me. I'm not kicking the idea down, I'm just saying it would have never occurred to me that was "play." I would have called that practice or skirmishing. Like ball practice or training for a meet. It wasn't the real thing, but what you did sometimes to prepare.I concur. The idea, like I said above, of not campaigning, but just constantly skirmishing seemed as alien to me as well, Alien. I didn't see the reason for an imaginary fight if it wasn't going somewhere or involved more than just chance encounters. It had to have a goal or something to achieve. I still don't like the idea of wasting time at something unless you get something out of it or something is achieved or something is learned or discovered.</blockquote>

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