Standing in the narrow space between the end of the aisles and the deli counter in a small local grocery store, I watched as a small boy guided a shopping cart through that narrow passage, followed and directed by his obviously concerned mother. I contemplated the difference between his tenuous first efforts and my own easy stunt driving through grocery stores. Certainly some of the difference is owed to my larger size and strength; but no insignificant portion of the credit goes to practice.
As I muse on this, my mind goes back to an observation I made about two decades ago (which I preserved in my journal, for those who recall my suggestion in Pay Attention that you keep such a thing) in connection with landscaping at the radio station at which I then worked. A license upgrade had required the installation of four towers, and the yard and driveway were torn up completely for an extended time. Once the construction was finished, dirt was poured over the devastation, in some places red clay and in others black humus. It puzzled me at first, as I watched this spread across the ground. Once it was all leveled, sod was laid atop the humus, and macadam on the clay. Each dirt had its function in the design. As it was being finished, I recognized that this was the right way to do it; yet I also recognized that being professional meant that the landscapers knew the right way to do it before they started, while I as an amateur could only see the advantages in hindsight.
I was for many years a boy scout, and eventually a scout leader. In that time I did near a thousand miles of canoeing in major trips, fifty-eight miles the shortest that I recall and the last and longest an eight-day two-hundred mile (actually, two hundred eight miles, so someone was counting) celebration of the United States bicentennial in nineteen seventy-six. I also did at least one long hike through the Rocky Mountains. My brother and I each had enough of the old leather Fifty Miler patches that we contemplated making wallets of them. Yet there was one patch I had that was specific to our troop which held special significance among those who had it. I received the Swampy Patrol Patch in recognition of the fact that on one occasion I went down with the canoe. Many of those of us who were the most experienced white water canoeists in the troop wore this patch proudly. My explanation was this: having once swamped in a canoe, I understood that experience far better than I ever had from simulated swamping and discussion of the process. I was there. That made me a bit more confident in a canoe, because I knew first hand what could go wrong, and what it felt like when it did.
Our games almost always include some concept of skill improvement, ways in which the characters get better at what they do. Why, or how, characters improve at these things is rarely if ever considered. Yet there are three closely related but distinct notions in those three anecdotes above which not only provide a logical explanation for such improvements, but at the same time offer ways to color one more aspect of the game world.
My ability to steer a cart through a grocery store has been attributed to practice. I’ve done it before, enough times that I know what I’m doing. Driving, for most of us, is a good example of this. In our first days behind the wheel, we are feeling our way through the process, looking for the accelerator and the brake, measuring how quickly and how far to turn the wheel, and looking down when we need one of the controls not already in our hands. Over the years, we grow more comfortable, treating the car more as an extension of ourselves, to some degree, as we have come to know how hard to push the pedals, how far to turn the wheel, and where each commonly used control is on the dash or the column. Practice makes perfect, they say; it does so because the more you have done something, the less you have to think about what you’re doing. In this sense, practice results in skill improvement by the principle of the routine. We do more and more of the process with less and less attention. We don’t need to think about it when we’re within the routine aspects, as those things we will do automatically.
Information is the factor involved in the landscaping example. Whether they knew where to find the information or had done it this way before, the contractors knew what sort of dirt to put down, and carefully plotted their intended yard design to accommodate this before they brought in the soil. Many skills improve because we have informed ourselves about them, whether on the level of theory or techniques. When we started, we knew what to do; but now we understand why we do it, and that enables us to do it better.
The swampy patrol patch was about experience. Those of us who went down with the canoe knew something about canoeing that you couldn’t read in a book and couldn’t learn from someone else and couldn’t even really practice. It had happened to us. Because it had happened to us, we knew what it was like when it happened, and so were in a better position to see it coming. So with many skills and abilities, the moment you have done something with them that you’ve never done before, or faced a problem never before faced and discovered the solution within your abilities, you’ve learned something unteachable, something experiential, that can only be truly understood by having been there and done that.
Some games let these factors be part of character improvement. Star Frontiers included the assumption that the character would buy instructional modules which provided new information. Original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons combined teaching and practice in the character’s advancement process. Some games give a chance to improve an ability by using it. Multiverser allows all three to be factors in advancing your ability at something. Yet even in games in which you pay your points and you get your levels, these aspects can come into play to color both the skill improvements and the use of them. You realize that this particular lock is of a sort you just saw recently; fortunately, you’ve read how to pick it, so you have little trouble getting past it.
Sure, the character has gotten better. A little thought to why he got better and how he got better can flesh out who he is and what he’s doing quite nicely.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
