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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4733650" data-attributes="member: 54707">To a degree, I also agree. But just because one has held different kinds of occupations does not either necessarily negate, or prove, correlational linkage. It would depend upon how wide (or how narrow) were the professional connections in a given individual, if any, how wide were the corresponding and related game interests - I personally am not narrowing gaming interests just down to D&D, or even just to RPGs, though RPGs were my main focus of inquiry, and so forth and so on.For instance some occupations might be undertaken out of necessity or opportunity, but might have little relationship to avocational interest, but other jobs might be related to vocational interests to one degree or another. Then again using the some of the examples above one might have gaming interests that include military, business, detective, fantasy and sci-fi games. So in those cases the correlation linkages might be very wide, though not necessarily direct. (It would depend a lot upon how exactly such linkages, if they exists, are manifested. Do linkages show up just in gaming interests, in designing games, in genre preferences, in designing scenarist or adventures and campaigns, etc, etc?)Without a discussion of exact occupational interests (either actual employments, or desired employments) related to avocational interests, you can only draw some very general conclusions, and most of those would probably be highly speculative at best as far as real accuracy of investigation goes.Someone though might wish to discuss their occupational interests or dream-occupational interests in relation to their gaming interests. See if they can discover any linkages, or not. But it would not be instructive or useful to just say, "yeah, in my opinion, there is no linkage or correlation in my experience between real world occupations and gaming interests," or "there is a definite linkage or correlation based upon my experience," without thoughtfully and actually examining your own experience and looking for clues that seem to demonstrate one point or another. (I am speaking in general terms EW, not to you specifically.) In other words, as with all human behavior, it will never be as simple as a Geekish "numbers race" but will require a thorough examination of how human behavior relates to human interests, motivations, and actions. And it will require an examination not just of numerical or statistical tendencies, but an investigation of what those numbers actually really represent in relation to actual behavior.In my case, for example, I can see  a definite and demonstrable link between my avocational interests and my professional/occupational interests (I don't have time right now to explain in detail) in respect to some of the occupations I have had in the past. in some cases they were sort of extensions of one another. I have even used gaming to develop occupational training scenarios and simulations as practice for real world skills outside of gaming. However that's not true in all cases as far as my occupations go. However I have often "written-in" my occupational experience into various gaming scenarios and adventures and missions I have developed. I've also written-in my professional experience into milieus and used such personal background and experience for imaginary world-development.But not in every case, at least certainly not directly. For instance my first job was working at an auto-parts supply store. Later I became a delivery driver at the same place. Never really worked in auto-parts to my game scenarios or milieus, however the job did give me the opportunity to go to many seedy sections of the city and to visit many areas I probably never otherwise would have. This increased my target list of "Vadding targets" of abandoned places that I discovered at work and later went back and surreptitiously explored. And I've often worked real life Vadding experiences into my game scenarios and even world design. Therefore no auto-parts in my games per se, but a lot of Vad-scouting while being a delivery driver that explored extensively has worked its way into the games, and even the characters I've written. For instance with crime and military and espionage (and even pulp and sci-fi and fantasy) games I've often used people I really came across during Vads or during cases or investigations that were used as the basis or template for NPCs. So the situation varies by type of employment with me.In some cases, and in some respects, it's like a scenario of Six Degrees of Separation. In other cases and in other respects I can easily see the linkages. They are obvious. But that is my personal case, and so I'm trying to see if the same sort of situations apply to others.I'm sure I made plenty of typos and mistakes in my reply, but I gotta  roll and get ready. Revival at church tonight. And I gotta help out.See ya guys later.By the way, "Word" to Hardcore D&D girl.Thanks for the XP, and yeah, we gotta roll togetha!Security guards for life!</blockquote>

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