How do your hobbies or job change the way you play D&D?

[Ancalagon]

The job I do involves a lot of "do these numbers make sense?" So I'm very good at quick "sanity check" estimations for a variety of things.

This can be difficult on GMs sometimes because, if it's a topic I'm vaguely familiar, I can quickly make an estimate for something. I won't be exact, but it can lead to ... erm... stark differences with the GM's quick guess, or "good for the game but wildly unrealistic" value.

For example
the GM: "the entire kingdom is behind you, this cannot fail!"
the party. "All right. You know what, a few hundred thousands GPs would be really a good way to solve this problem" (these are trusted individuals that would actually use the money and not just spend it"
the GM "uh, yes, we can provide you with 25 000 gp"
me "uuuh.... is the entire kingdom really behind us? You do realize that a country this size has, in D&D economics, a GDP in the range of over 200 million gp?"
GM stares

The GM: The area is a patch of pure ice in the middle of the wastelands somewhere. It will be very difficult to find.
Me: How big is this patch, roughly?
GM: a few miles?
Me: Should be spotable from far away
GM: the hills limits sight.
Me: Hey funky party wizard, how high up can you send that sensor?
Wizard: About a mile?
Me: How far can it see?
Wizard: as far as it has to, if it's important.
Me: math... Ok that gives us a sight radius of 143 km, provided that the planet has the same size as Earth"
GM stares

So... it's not good?

 

[MNblockhead]

So... it's not good?

No, is good. And I say that as the guy this more often finds himself in the DM role of your sample conversations.

I felt like that when I ran The Expanse and one of my players was an engineer.

After a few discussions regarding travel and communication times, in a game where the rule book includes discussions of apoapsis, periapsis, hohmann transfers, brachistochrone trajectories, prograde and retrograde burns, ... I just let him figure things out when it wasn't easily available in a look-up table.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I fish a lot. No impact I can think of.

I bet you are more patient than most people.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm a level designer, so every dungeon I design needs to follow my design personal philosophies. It is very important to me that dungeons are not boring, and offer a variety of challenges to my players.

 

[Ulfgeir]

I would say my work (neither present or past) has not had any effect on my gaming. Work now as an IT-technician. Have worked as a tester (briefly), a programmer and a localizer.

As for hobbies, not really much of an effect. Having done various martial arts for 15-20 years (also including HEMA), archery for 19 years, I will know when the makers of the game has zero clues about these, but I will most of the time just let it slide. It is not a hill worth dying on.

I might go for slightly more realistic historical clothing for my characters, as I used to be a member of a mediaeval club (group that broke away from the SCA). That means I also have knowledge about mediaeval/renaissance dances, and we had a choir in the group. So I can kind of sing, and know some old songs.

Being a wannabe-writer, I think the largest impact is that I sometimes write chronicles and sidestories about the charcaters.
Also collects lots of trivia, that sometimes gets incorporated.

 

[John Dallman]

I came to RPGs as a student, studying physics (and later computers) at an engineering university. That immunised me against ideas like "Game designers know better than you about everything" and "rules are sacred and should be followed, even if they don't seem to make sense."

 

[Mad_Jack]

On the DM side, like a lot of folks here I'm interested in history and all sorts of other things like architecture, geography, geology, etc., so when I create worlds they tend to be very well-tied-together and generally make logical sense. I'm also an occasional writer and poet, and have a ridiculously overactive imagination, so I'm pretty much constantly designing worlds and npcs in my head to keep the creative pressure from backing up and making my head explode, lol.

On the player side, I'm a trained actor and have interests in psychology, sociology and anthropology, so my characters tend to be deeply layered and complex - even when designing a character based solely on mechanics/optimization, I always go back and think to myself, what sort of life would lead someone to make those choices, what sort of person would make them?
A lot of times, my characters are tools for exploring some psychological angle or issue, or to explore the interaction of certain personality traits with the world around them.
I'm also really big on making the game session entertaining, so I try to play my characters in a way that gets the entire party involved involved in what's going on and sets up opportunities for the other players to have awesome moments.

 

[Mad_Jack]

The GM: The area is a patch of pure ice in the middle of the wastelands somewhere. It will be very difficult to find.

Oh gods... Flashbacks to the time a party full of IRL engineers voluntarily TPK'd themselves (despite my protestations) while crossing an ice bridge after one of them, in the middle of the bridge, stopped, whipped out a calculator, and figured out that according to my descriptions the bridge wasn't sufficient to hold the party's weight and they should logically all fall to their deaths...

 

[The Green Hermit]

I am a teacher. Prepping for the next session has a lot in common with lesson planning.

 

[Dioltach]

Oh gods... Flashbacks to the time a party full of IRL engineers voluntarily TPK'd themselves (despite my protestations) while crossing an ice bridge after one of them, in the middle of the bridge, stopped, whipped out a calculator, and figured out that according to my descriptions the bridge wasn't sufficient to hold the party's weight and they should logically all fall to their deaths...

Sounds like something from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.