Catch Your Hare

Today I’m reading Authentic Happiness, by Martin Seligman. I recommend it, if just for the wonderful psychology studies.

Ellen Langer, a Harvard professor and the leading academic in the field of mindlessness, had people try to butt into a line of office workers waiting to copy material. When the would-be queue-jumpers asked “Would you mind if I cut in front of you?”, they were refused. When they asked “Would you mind if I cut in front of you, because I have to copy something?” they were allowed to cut in.

We played 4th edition D&D tonight, at Simon’s house.

Now, I’m not sure why it was so boring. Perhaps I don’t like D&D as much as I thought. Perhaps I didn’t understand the rules well enough. Either way, I was bored out of my mind.

In the first half-hour, I had to stop letting my head rest on the table apathetically. To do this, I used two batteries to support my head, so it didn’t quite hit the table. I had to put the negative terminals on my forehead, because the positive terminals would have left too much of a mark.

Working out how to do this was more fun than playing the game. However, Steve noticed me and asked me what I was doing, so I had to stop.

Then I rolled a die, but missed whatever I was trying to hit, and had to wait 20 minutes before my turn came round again.

During this 20 minutes, I learnt to roll dice with my nose. This is a specialised skill. Hit the die wrongly and the die merely slides instead of rolling. The correct action is a golf-style swing with your nose, hitting the die slightly above its centre.

Working out how to do this was also more fun than playing the game.

By now, all the monsters were dead. We did a bit of roleplay and found a map to another dungeon. (Note: the only treasure we found in the first dungeon was a map to another dungeon. Adventurers must hate that. “Oh, it’s only another fucking map.”)

Around this time, I left.

I will go back when they stop playing D&D.