In 1971, Stanford University's Professor Philip Zimbardo had a little experiment.
The experiment was intended to be a two week run, taking a pool of twenty-four volunteers (of a 75 volunteer group) to test an idea: that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards were key to understanding abusive prison situations.
The twenty-four chosen were then split into two camps; prisoners and guards. Guards were given clothing to define them - khaki pants, military surplus jackets, mirrored sunglasses. Prisoners were dressed in ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps with numbers sewn into them - the prisoners were not referred to by name, but by number.
Ultimately, the experiment fell apart, and was closed in the first six days because the guards took to their roles a little too willingly - while physically abusing the prisoners was outright banned, they were instructed to "promote disorientation, depersonalization, and deindividualization." If you're very interested, you can see the wikipedia article here...
I have to tell you that story, so I can tell you this one.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
This is an Introduction!
Hello! My name is Snack, or perhaps Joe, but I want to welcome you to this, my blog about dungeon running.
Previously, I was given a moment of your time on the Pugging Pally blog with a guest post (here) that was pretty much a very simplified version of my views and ideas on "pugging" (joining "Pick Up Groups" to venture into dungeons in parties of five, ten, or twenty five) and how it can help make someone a better player - how tenacity and diligence in learning how to play can lead people to situations where they get better.
Because of that, I've met some really cool people, and talked a lot with them via "the twitters" and that eventually leads to the meat and potatoes content of this post.
Disco, the head priestess at Disciplinary Action and I had a conversation, that essentially boiled down to "Tanking and healing look like fun. I bet we could do it!"
And now we are.
This here is Caluna. She's a Discipline Priest on the Medivh server, putting her square into the Ruin Battlegroup.
And last night, she hit level 15.
Hello, LFD.
The purpose of this blog is to talk about dungeons, and the myriad of things that exist in said dungeons. (i.e., dragons, gold, et cetera) - while World of Warcraft is certainly going to be a big focus, it is not the only game where you run around in dungeons killing monsters and gathering items for resale in your nearest town - though, any more, it feels as if the "dungeon exploration" niche of RPGs is getting ever smaller.
I'd like to talk about those games as well, games like Etrian Odyssey or Shiren the Wanderer, Torchlight or Nethack that wear their dungeon crawler tags with pride; though, I probably will wind up talking more about WoW because I hear there's some sort of thing happening with that soon? Where there may be some sort of cataclysmic changes?
Well, if there's anything we'll do, it's face them, head on.
That's what us adventurers do, you know.
Previously, I was given a moment of your time on the Pugging Pally blog with a guest post (here) that was pretty much a very simplified version of my views and ideas on "pugging" (joining "Pick Up Groups" to venture into dungeons in parties of five, ten, or twenty five) and how it can help make someone a better player - how tenacity and diligence in learning how to play can lead people to situations where they get better.
Because of that, I've met some really cool people, and talked a lot with them via "the twitters" and that eventually leads to the meat and potatoes content of this post.
Disco, the head priestess at Disciplinary Action and I had a conversation, that essentially boiled down to "Tanking and healing look like fun. I bet we could do it!"
And now we are.
 |
| Smile for the camera! |
This here is Caluna. She's a Discipline Priest on the Medivh server, putting her square into the Ruin Battlegroup.
And last night, she hit level 15.
Hello, LFD.
The purpose of this blog is to talk about dungeons, and the myriad of things that exist in said dungeons. (i.e., dragons, gold, et cetera) - while World of Warcraft is certainly going to be a big focus, it is not the only game where you run around in dungeons killing monsters and gathering items for resale in your nearest town - though, any more, it feels as if the "dungeon exploration" niche of RPGs is getting ever smaller.
I'd like to talk about those games as well, games like Etrian Odyssey or Shiren the Wanderer, Torchlight or Nethack that wear their dungeon crawler tags with pride; though, I probably will wind up talking more about WoW because I hear there's some sort of thing happening with that soon? Where there may be some sort of cataclysmic changes?
Well, if there's anything we'll do, it's face them, head on.
That's what us adventurers do, you know.
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