As part of my current research in context project I was able to interview psychology lecturer Dr Dean A Marshall about the crossover between his roles as both a Cognitive Psychologist and a D&D dungeon master hoping to gain understanding of the roles knowledge of psychology specifically in the areas of cognitive/developmental/social psychology could benefit the development of a transformative game in the format of a TTRPG or something similar. Below is a link to the video as the transcript is raw data from the recording. that has not being edited
WEBVTT CAPTURE OF
SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW WITH
Dr DEAN A MARSHALL BY JOHN PADDEN
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Dr Dean Marshall: Okay, that's recorded. There you go.
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John Padden: lovely
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Dr Dean Marshall: drop me to go, then just introduce myself. Or do you do a little introduction for okay. Hi, this is Dean, Dr. Dean, A. Marshall. And just if you wanna give us a brief oversight off
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John Padden: your background in psychology like your pathways that you went through, and also then go onto your role as a DM for Hots. 8. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, everyone. So yeah, my name is Dr. Dean Marshall. I'm a chartered psychologist and decision-making researcher. So my path in.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, academia I started doing psychology at college level. And I also did law at the same time. And I did biology.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I hated law. And so and and I actually really enjoyed biology from a scientific perspective. But I found psychology more interesting just from a general day to day perspective. So yes, it was scientific. But also I could think about it as an example when I was on the bus on the way home from the lesson, and I did not want to do that with something like law. So for me it was a natural progression of something I was just very interested in
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Dr Dean Marshall: and so I went to do my bachelors at the legendary Ucl. And I did my masters. Also at Ucl.
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Dr Dean Marshall: with a guy called. He's retired now, but Professor John Fisk, and so me and him studied
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Dr Dean Marshall: specific errors in decision making, which I'll kind of talk a bit more about later. Called the conjunction fallacy. So my area looks at probabilities. How we judge them, and how we're not very good at it. Actually.
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Dr Dean Marshall: after that I took a few years out. Because things like postgraduate study, you know. Phd, level study there hard to get into when you're not self funding and considering I come from a very working class background, I was not
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Dr Dean Marshall: ready to self fund. So I had to go through the processes of applying for different scholarships and grants and things like that which take a few years, and finding the right place, etc. But luckily, whilst I did that
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Dr Dean Marshall: also took the break between Masters and Phd. I did stay in the realm of
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Dr Dean Marshall: research realistically. So. I did a bit of pharmaceutical market research, which is an international company. I did some clinical trial work. Which was brilliant, you know a very process, driven style of research rather than I guess more theoretical, you would call it
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so we did all sorts medical stuff, you know, pharmaceutical drug stuff as well as cosmetic and aesthetic stuff. So literally, you know, testing back into your biology studies in college as well. Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's II really enjoyed, you know, the element of it. We we did have to consider things like the science of, How does an anti persprint work compared to a compared to a deodorant, you know. And so so that was really interesting. So yeah, it was good for me and
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it was good leverage. For when I was applying for those ph, d things, because obviously, I was doing real world research. So yeah, eventually, I was offered a
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Dr Dean Marshall: a position doing a Ph. D. At the University of York with a little bit of money behind it, so I didn't have to you know, pay for it all myself, which is lovely. And so that was with Professor Elizabeth means. And so her research area is developmental psychology. So she's a developmental psychologist. And specifically she looks at something called mindedness, which is kind of a caregivers
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Dr Dean Marshall: like attachment to a to an infant or someone that they're caring for, and their kind of how attuned they are to the mental wants, needs, etc., of that person. So that was her area. Except for she's she's incredibly I guess.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Learn it when it comes to the publishing. And you know something. She's she's part of something called ref research, excellence, framework. And so and so she has a vast knowledge of developmental psychology and publications. So I actually went for an interview. For like an Nhs Funded position, which wasn't a Phd.
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Based on this thing called the Strange situation. It's like an attachment study.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I went for it because I had experience of running that experiment for real at Ucl, because they have a strange situation, Lab. Not many places do, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: after the interview she walked me out of the building. Liz walked me out of the building, and she said to me.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Do you know we do? Phds in the department, and I knew as soon as she asked me that question I didn't. I didn't actually have that, you know, Nhs funded job but she was hinting that we could work together. So I got an email from Liz a couple of kind of weeks later saying, You know, your area is cognitive. My area is developmental.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm really interested in working with you. If you want to basically blend our research interests together and come up with a project which looks for parallels between. You know these decision making errors that you talked about in your interview in adults and children, and how they develop and where they develop and things like that. So that was my Ph. D. Took me 5 years a little bit longer than I expected, but took me 5 years, and I graduated that in 2021
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Dr Dean Marshall: and then, since then I've been working at a place called Arden University, which is kind of this blended approach to learning some students in person, some students online, like a bit like the open university. So yeah, I've had a teaching heavy role
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Dr Dean Marshall: since then. But I still I still publish in the background, you know, so got a couple of publications which is strictly cognitive, and I've got one in review at the moment, which is gonna be hopefully published in developmental psychology. So yeah, I'm still, I'm still trying to stay active as a researcher.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, he's still in touch with Liz as well. Yeah. Well, that publication we've got in developmental psychology. I'm the lead author. Liz is my second author. So she's she's co-authoring that so the the where that came from, the data we're using for that was from my Phd, so essentially, we've we've Cha, we've taken a chapter from my thesis, and we've turned it into something which is, you know, a little bit more
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Dr Dean Marshall: condensed. And and and she's added a little bit more context in in sort of the background section or introduction. And and yeah, we've got a publication at that hopefully, so yeah, and this. And we've got another chapter from our thesis. That's we're gonna work on. So yeah, I stay in contact with Liz. I stay in contact with John as well from from Uklan. I only emailed him, you know, 2 days ago, basically. So I still, I still
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Dr Dean Marshall: what you learn, maybe we'll talk about it later on. But what you learn in certain areas is because I've I've got my academic career, and I've got things like a you know. I have a part time
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John Padden: kind of hobby musician, I guess. Ho, ho! Ho! Implies I'd never really do anything with it. But I do play gigs up and down the country and stuff so, and what you're learning those types of roles is it's often who you know is is, you know, networking is one of the strengths at the moment is. That's why we're conducting these interviews. Where going to these practitioner and professional lectures is is to stop kick
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John Padden: starting that approach to not necessarily even in your discipline, or even your side of the the academic structure, so to speak, on yourself, based on the sciences and may on the arts. It's it's the whole process
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John Padden: collaboration networking.
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John Padden: and that sharing of knowledge.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, it's gold, you know, you you got so much worth from other people especially, you know. I think there's a tendency for some people, and you get something like a qualification
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Dr Dean Marshall: to kind of, you know. Be a bit
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know. How do? How do I word this up themselves? Let's say about the fact. They got a qualification where, realistically, you know, experience is half the battle, regardless of if you got certificate or not. And so, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: there's always more knowledgeable others, especially.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I think I think a lot of students expect somebody who's educated to. Let's say a Phd level to just kinda know not everything, but a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff. And yeah, you do. But in that particular field. If anything, it's it's it's kinda too specific, you know. So I can speak for hours on a very specific topic. To people who are interested in that very specific topic. But you ask me most things outside of psychology, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: there's much more knowledgeable people in the world. So you know goes. Go ask that. Basically, that's one thing I've learned going from
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John Padden: undergraduate to post graduate study, even changing disciplines is you? You you undergraduate? Well, from my creative experience. It's
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John Padden: his, all the knowledge in this area. So here's all the knowledge of illustration on a very basic level. And the different areas you can go into which one takes you fancy if you're gonna go on to do a masters narrow it down in this area. So, for instance, now, I'm in games design, leaning more towards transformative games and narrative design. Even though you've got level design. You've got environmental artists. You've got concept artists, character artists, science side, you've got programming, coding.
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John Padden: And then after that, you go in. So why are you looking at transformative games mixed with narrative design, like what you hoping to research that hasn't been done before. Was this gap in the market that you found? That's also standing on the shoulders of giants and looking at what's come before? Yeah. And then this this version of this new knowledge you found into other people. But yeah, exactly, just narrowing down.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But that's what you want from a you know, from an expert, from somebody who's taking the time and the effort to look into something, you know. Essentially, you want them to be that one of 10 or one of 20 in the world who knows this thing in such great detail? You don't really want to approach an expert because of the
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Dr Dean Marshall: vastness of their detail, necessarily, but vastness of their information, I guess. But but the the detail you kind of don't get with undergraduate. You don't get with casual learner or whatever, so I see the point to it. But of course.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, I see myself as like a lifelong learner. I don't think. and I think you know, you must be the same as well, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: the type of people that progressed to postgraduate studies.
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Dr Dean Marshall: They love learning, they love the process of learning. So it's kind of it's frustrating at times that you can't learn the level of detail and everything. But
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know we don't have the time.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Anyway. So so you know, that's that's a summary ish of my you know, Academy academic side of things. But you know, I know we're blending today's discussion with with games specifically Ttrpgs. And for me, dungeons and dragons. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: I actually started playing dungeons and dragons fairly recently compared to, let's say, my academic career. Yeah. So may maybe 5 or 6
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Dr Dean Marshall: years ago now.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it was kind of odd, actually, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm much like many people, you know. I'm a bit of a nerd, generally speaking, interested in some
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Dr Dean Marshall: fantasy stuff like Lord of the rings, but casually, and then interested in some sci-fi stuff like Star Wars, but again pretty casually.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and and I would like our Pg games when I was young, when I was a kid massive, massive fan of the legend of Zelda Series. I'm I'm the generation that was also hook line and sinker in pokemon, you know. So so you know, these
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I and I really liked also kind of more complex rule, based games like, like you go like trading card games things like that. So you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: it's always been kind of just on the radar, but
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Dr Dean Marshall: but a game like dungeons and dragons I've never played, and I've never been approached to play. I think the most similar thing in war gaming would have been Warhammer Warhammer. 40,000 was what I used to play where I'm 40 K.
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Dr Dean Marshall: but again, that was actually an art teacher. Actually, you know, Peter Austin, I suppose I can use his full name now, cause he's he doesn't work at the school anymore, but from from Ashton.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and he started a War Armour Club, which was really nice because it blended
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Dr Dean Marshall: a hobby, you know. That wasn't directly art with art. So yeah, it was just brilliant.
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John Padden: I think the nice thing with his. His club is cause it took away that competitiveness when it comes to what you could start having
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John Padden: some of that role play because it wouldn't always be playing against each other. Sometimes we just be. You know what? I'm gonna paint my models? I'm gonna customize them. So what mind to stand out. And I think that that customizability is probably what's lend itself to you, going into dungeons and dragons, where customizability of your own character, as at the end you've got customizability over pretty much the whole landscape. But it's a collaborative effort between you and the players.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, well, I kind of that's good point. Cause I kind of was always like that. I would always be the person that tried to like convert a model, you know, and being a being a 1314 year old lad, let loose with like a scalpel, or, you know, like something something to like, shave something off a piece of plastic, or do whatever like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I really loved it, and then and then you wa when you have the element of like green stuff in there, so like the putty, you know, I would like turn it into like strings of of blood or guts, or whatever, and chop a space marine half, and then
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Dr Dean Marshall: put the guts between them like, yeah, exactly exactly. Exactly. So. That was that was miles more interesting to me than you know. Space marine out of the box. Put it together like it tells you to and kind of paint it to a cooler scheme which already exists. You know, II liked the creative element of it realistically. So so anyway. Yeah, to get back to do some dragons about 5 or 6 years ago.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It was. So this is pre pandemic. It was complete. I guess.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Happen stance that
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 separate groups of friends
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Dr Dean Marshall: that weren't necessarily connected approached me within the same week.
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Dr Dean Marshall: said, We've got we're going to try and start dungeons and dragons game. Do you want to play? And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I was like, why not, you know, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: I asked. You know, what what do you need to do, and they kind of said, Oh, just turn up with some imagination, and that's that's fine.
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John Padden: No, exactly. And so I didn't need any money to start. I didn't need any
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Dr Dean Marshall: time, I guess, or anything other than very brief character creation. But again I was still very new to it, so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I had 2 dungeon masters, 2 separate dungeon dungeon masters who were experienced but, by the way, very different. And one of them was with a kind of group of just
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Dr Dean Marshall: mutual friends. It was a very, very small group at the time. Me, a guy called Sai, who is who is now in hot eights, which I'll talk about in a minute. His son, who was 10 at the time and then this dungeon master, who'd been playing since the old rules in
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Dr Dean Marshall: 3.5. So we've been playing since about, you know, for about 15 years or so.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and, by the way, it did become obvious cause. He was very strict on rules, you know. Much more strict than I am. And then add this other dungeon, master called James, who.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So he approached a a group of people that worked at the Zoo. So my wife works at Chester Zoo and heard a group of friends basically wanted to start again. His style was completely different, because he was very loose with the rules he prioritized essentially
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Dr Dean Marshall: and just. you know, narrative exploration, and like fun.
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Dr Dean Marshall: over things like
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Dr Dean Marshall: exact dice roles in things like combat, you know. So these are 2 different games that approached me in the same week. So I ended up playing with the a smaller group on the Tuesday night, you know, which was, we were all fumbling to create our characters. I basically said, I wanna create a person who
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Dr Dean Marshall: who was similar to me personally, actually, because I was still studying my Phd at the time. And so I said, Well, I wanna create a person is kind of like a scholar or wants to learn stuff. You know, a person that would really nerd out in a library.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And the dudgeon master advised. Well, that's probably not going to be like a barbarian or a fighter, or someone who just runs in with an axe and chop something up. It's probably going to be a wizard, a sorcerer, or whatever. But wizards in D and D are the ones that
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Dr Dean Marshall: learn magic on kind of gifted it from birth, or you know, bloodline or divine
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Dr Dean Marshall: gift, or whatever you know. So he's kind of said Wizard, and I was like, All right. Well, I'm also.
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Dr Dean Marshall: generally speaking, quite cheeky, chappy, and I don't want, you know. I want kind of a witty sense of humor in in narrative terms for the game. And so he said, Well, why don't you go with like a half link or a like a, you know. Don't go with a Barbara. Don't go with a Goliath. Don't go with a half Orc, or whatever so you know. Don't go with your big
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Dr Dean Marshall: characters. So I ended up being a known gnome wizard in that game. He was called Professor Fluxus
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Dr Dean Marshall: and his whole thing was about like the ebb and flow of energy and things like that. So, yeah, really, really good character, cheeky guy. And I based him loosely also on Professor Mcgonagall from Harry Potter, because he has a kind of soft
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Dr Dean Marshall: Scottish accent. Loves, loves an innuendo. He's a he's a good character still. Still. So my first. Only by one day my first d and d character, and probably one of my favorite to this day
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Dr Dean Marshall: and then in the other campaign. So we started literally the day after different group.
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and I sort of just
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Dr Dean Marshall: knew I was already playing a you know, a person which had based on myself. And so I just thought right? Well, I'm just gonna flip it on its head. And so I just asked this other dungeon master. Okay, well, I'm playing a known wizard in another game like, what do you recommend? What's like the opposite of a gnome wizard, basically. And he was like, well, probably like a big Goliath or a
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Dr Dean Marshall: half fork barbarian. So I ended up playing a half fork. Barbarian in this other game, purely because I wanted variety. That was that, was it. And so he's called Zorag, and he, Zorag the smasher, to give him his full name, and he he's just completely stupid, but I just played into that you know his, his one personality trait is stupidity. So II played that into him as much as I possibly could, and and you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: with a character like that. You've just got to accept that if if they die because of the stupidity.
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Dr Dean Marshall: then so be it. You know you're playing the characters how it's supposed. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not the end of the world. It's just the end of.
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John Padden: I'm
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John Padden: of almost basing the face character he made on stereotypes with the DM. Being such a stickler for rules and everything. And and I'm listening to you going. Oh, I want it to be a scholar, and I want to read, and things like that. So he pointed me in a direction of a wizard, and then I want it to be funny. So he's like you have to be a halfling, whereas
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John Padden: there's nothing nowadays, and I will get into like how you feel. You are at the end, for I find when I look at over like
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John Padden: Youtube scenarios with, you know, dimension 20 and and things like that where they want to be a bit more loose with the narrative, and and explore
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John Padden: the possibilities and create those serendipitous moments where just exciting things can happen that comes from a place of just going. You know what the rules are there not set in stone? Just a guide, and you go. Wh! What wouldn't be funny if there was a barbarian who
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John Padden: with love box. And then you start thinking, Well, why does he love books? And but that's going that then, for me, gets tied back into your conjunction policy where it's like
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John Padden: you give him like these directions. So I wanted to read books, and I wanted to be a cheeky, chappy route with you must be this. Well, why can't be this as well? Why can't you get this sort of if that's when you start having a more exciting time? I'm not saying you didn't, because it was just. If you think now with some of the people you play when you face that something you could, you see, definitely do so while I
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Dr Dean Marshall: so I'll I'll answer that. But I'll answer it in about 2 min, because because
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Dr Dean Marshall: a after playing these games for a a a few, you know, years, we kind of realized we just have so much fun playing these games and and the style of play which we kind of adapted to is very crude, you know. It's it's it's full of like filthy jokes and all the rest of it, and especially when I started to DM, because I kind of wanted it to be very different from.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, in academic life. I do take it very seriously, and like a Of course I have my teaching. I have my personality and my teaching and things like that. But if you read one of my publications you'd think this is the driest boring man. You think like, my God, like this person just has 0 personality. And so when you enter a game like Dnd, it is an escape.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It is meant to be, or
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Dr Dean Marshall: purely different than
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Dr Dean Marshall: like day to day life and escape. You know, we we have people in our group. So we formed a a group called Hot 8. We. It's called Hot 8, by the way, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: we would basically name the different dice roles, like everyone knows that when you roll a 20 on the dice, it's a Nat 20 natural 20. So that's roll you can get. And there's a Nat one as well. You know, there's there's a dirty 20, you know, there's different names for things. We just yeah, yeah, exactly like that. We just seem to be rolling 8 on the dice a lot, and we couldn't, really.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, and eventually it just kind of caught on that when we'd roll in, it would say, Oh, it's a hot sexy 8 or no, it's a hot a or no. No, no. Again.
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Dr Dean Marshall: like probabilistically, you've got 5 chance of hitting app number on the dice as long as it. As long as it's an equally weighted dice, you've got 5 chance of it, like literally every single one of those you know numbers on their own. So no, it was just. I think it's one of those things like, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: after one person would name it, the next one would say, Oh, I got high, you know, like, and then, you know you, it's it's it's similar to something called the gamblers fallacy in in cognitive psychology, where you know, you would essentially.
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you call the 8 a win, because we've
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Dr Dean Marshall: named it or recognized as something special, like a natural 20. And we make a big deal out of it. You start to kind of remember the wins more than remember the losses. And and the next thing you know, hot 8 was just a hot 8 was just a thing that was a part of our game.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and we start to kind of call it success, even if even though it's low number, you know, on the dies, just because it's like, Oh, you got another 8 cool? So yeah, that was the name. But anyway. So we made this group and then
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Dr Dean Marshall: it. Now I will answer the question in the
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Dr Dean Marshall: pandemic. It was a really really good escape from our life, and I had become a a big fan, especially in the pandemic. I spent a lot of time in my garden, you know I built. I built some lovely decking and all sorts, and I'm not that, you know we painted all offences. I'm not the kind of person who can sit there do all those manual jobs and not have some kind of
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Dr Dean Marshall: music on or something in the background. I can't really sit in silence and do manual jobs. And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I got into a critical role at the time.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so I basically listened to all of campaign 2 critical role
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Dr Dean Marshall: in one summer.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And then I started to listen to, and I really enjoyed it, you know, and I really learned a lot as a dungeon master there and then.
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Dr Dean Marshall: one of my friends put me onto a different D and D podcast which I've never heard of called dungeons and daddies.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's like they have such great names, don't they? I know. Yeah. So dungeons and daddies the scenario. By the way, these guys who play it, this, this 3 guys and a girl, and they're all. I think they all live in La, and they are all like either stand-up comedians or comedy writers.
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or I think one of them actually wrote for like game of thrones or something, anyway, so
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Dr Dean Marshall: that they are talented in their own jobs. And and they're very quick witted. The scenario of dungeons and daddies is that they are for
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Dr Dean Marshall: normal dads from the normal world, you know. One of them's a soccer, dad. The other one's like a a hippie. The other one's like a failed rock star.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I identified with these guys separately, I anyway. And then there's the this, the archetypical like step, dad, as well like where he's. He loves the kids, but the kids don't like him. You know what I mean like so anyway, the the going in a minivan to the
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Dr Dean Marshall: soccer game, basically for their kids. And they end up going through a portal in in like time and space. And
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Dr Dean Marshall: and they end up in the forgotten realms which is like one of the worlds of D and D. So they're just normal. Dad's
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Dr Dean Marshall: in a fantasy world, except for they still have certain things from the real world, like technology, like they've got cell phones. They've got a they've got the minivan, you know, but the mini, the minivan starts talking and stuff, you know, cause it's a, you know, in fantasy world. And there's and what I liked about it was the fact that there was so many Pop culture references?
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Dr Dean Marshall: But in fantasy which made them more funny.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You know there would like there would be an Orc character turn up and should be called like, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know
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John Padden: S. Some random celebrity. She'd be like an a specific name, and they'd be like, oh, it'd be like Taylor Swift, or something like an awkward turn up! Called Taylor Swift, and they'd be like, you know. Oh, I thought, are you not like a a bard or something like that, she'd be like, oh, no, like I'm a barbarian like what in my twine adventure I'm doing at the moment there's a half bard called Thokk Presley. There you go! There you go it just there's something to it where
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John Padden: people especially for you gotta think this audiences that are watching them, not necessarily for the D and day, because they've seen the names and they know what they do. They get those links to real world culture.
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John Padden: It's a way in then, for them. So it's a great narrative device. I think it's a great like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It can be a brilliant juxtaposition between expectation
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the the game, you know. So so, and I try and do this as a DM. So I took a lot from dungeons in in how the game is constructed.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I really wanted to play on that with my character creation. So I wanted to play with.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, Meta. Gaming is like kind of taking knowledge outside of the game and using it to your advantage, is kind of frowned upon in DD cause. It means that you can essentially like cheat, you know, like as much as the game is loose with rules. There are ways to kind of met a game, and we really kind of just don't like it, cause it sort of spoils the fun a little bit.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and what it does, what Meta gaming does,
in my opinion, and in the group's opinion, is
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Dr Dean Marshall: it kind of forces the win at times when winning is not the goal like in in our group? Winning is not the goal, like, you know, killing the monsters. It's all part of it. But if you've had to met a game to do that, then you've kind of spoiled some fun. However, I like to play on the fact that
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Dr Dean Marshall: Metagamig is so
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Dr Dean Marshall: automatic, you know, in in cognitive psychology, we would call it a system, one or fast processing. Basically, it's the stuff that you can't avoid thinking about because you've got prior knowledge. So when I when I mention like as an example, I have a Npc. In in one of in my game called
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Dr Dean Marshall: Arnold Schnitzel Grabber, and he's based on Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he owns a bar. So that's why I called him Arnold and his accent I do an impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger when I play him, and so like, automatically when I'm in the character of Arnold
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Dr Dean Marshall: as a DM. I know how I'm
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Dr Dean Marshall: voicing the character. I know how he's acting, and things like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the carrot and the players at the table kind of they have an image in their head of like. What would Arnold Schwarzenegger look like in fantasy world, or whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: But he's not the same person.
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Dr Dean Marshall: He's actually he's actually a like a really. I'm not saying Arlene Schwarzneck isn't these things, but he's a really sweet guy in my campaign, and actually he's he's kind of frantic and like he's sort of a one man
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Dr Dean Marshall: tavern. He runs the entire place, so he's kind of serving you. Then he goes to the next people. Then he's here, there, and everywhere, because he's trying to cut costs as much as possible.
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Dr Dean Marshall: maximize his profit and send his daughter to a wizarding school. Like his. His role in my game is is like overworked dad, essentially who has, who has his daughter's future as his motivation. But you don't necessarily think that when you think Arnold Schwarzenegger, he probably to terminate to Governor, whatever the subversion of expectations because you've
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John Padden: crafted it based on this. You know what the players conventions are around that person, and so you can play with it a little bit. This is where I believe, like
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John Padden: your background of like developmental psychology, and and how it can relate entirely into D, and D is
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John Padden: these little tips, these little tricks, especially when you wanted to make
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John Padden: exciting. Have a laugh and play on things supporting people's expectations. You know. You see, in games all the time we offer this to exposition between
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John Padden: when you see something cute small, cuddly.
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John Padden: and then it turns around and it will just be like a humongous monster. I think I think I try. And now embed a sort of thing like that in in character back stories, because the the classic.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess it's I guess it's a stereotype at this point is that if A. D. And D character is part of the, you know, adventuring party, they have a tragic backstory.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's kind of a it's kind of a meme. At this point, you know, they've got a tragic backstory. They're always an orphan, you know, and there's always something bad that happens to them that met them flee, or whatever. And so I sort of. I like to try and play on that in my own character creation. Now the fact that
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I try and add
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 layers at least to a back story. There's the obvious tragic backstory which is the one that they might tell. You know the one that they might tell people about like. Oh, here's the reason I'm on this mission is because my village got attacked, and I had to flee.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's like, Okay, cool. Well, they know that you know the character knows that, and that's what they tell people. And on the face of it.
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Dr Dean Marshall: A lot of games might just be okay with that.
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However.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I like to add complexity, and I do this with my current players in the campaign, so I don't want to add true spoilers here, just in case anyone would would get them. And but but running a campaign at the moment called Terra Nova.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the characters have knowledge of their own back stories, and again they can share, however much they want to with the other players. If that's something that you set so privately with like a session 0 with them all. Yeah. Yeah. So I did. I did like a form of a session 0. But I did them separately with the character, with with the players. II always. I always line that sort of thing, because then, if someone has, like
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John Padden: their own kind of little story, they want to play at the same time as the Dms. So, for instance, they've got a character that
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John Padden: maybe there's not an old Wi wizard who's g10, the answer to your problem is, you need to find these 5 cast items, and then you have something to play with. Then, as the DM. Being able to bring that in into things, they can give and take as much information to the other plans, but it allows that on an individual basis, even though it's a group game
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Dr Dean Marshall: like having, because the DM is
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Dr Dean Marshall: is
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Dr Dean Marshall: like a big bank of secrets. I like to have
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I'm I'm letting the game determine. I'm letting the players determine when those secrets come out. I'm not trying to kind of shoehorn them in, force them in whatever cause. Some players just are kind of content with
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Dr Dean Marshall: knowing some of their back story, but not a lot of it, whereas other ones you know they they take a journey of discovery and and and want to know that. So, as an example in in that example. I just said, you know, characters village got attacked. They escaped, and that's why they're on the adventure. It's a tragic backstory, because, you know, as they looked back they saw their
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Dr Dean Marshall: father get murdered, or whatever you know, classic, tragic, backstory, and they know that that's their knowledge.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But I know as a DM, that things like that happen for a reason.
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John Padden: So you know, towns don't get attacked for no reason at all. Of course you can have your purely evil people in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: However, wouldn't it be interesting if I put additional notes to that person's backstory as a DM.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So they've got their knowledge. I color code. This is just green cause. That means to me. If I say it, it's safe, you know they know it. And then all this stuff that I add. Additionally, II color code in my like a you know document as as red.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So this is knowledge that they do not have about that situation?
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Dr Dean Marshall: What if, just to make things interesting, do that subversion of expectation like you were just saying, what if their father was the bad Guy. Essentially
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Dr Dean Marshall: so, you know, their father had been doing something really dodgy somewhere in the world, and people were essentially retaliating against them. So the character.
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Dr Dean Marshall: of course they see their father as a good person, that their protector things like that. But they didn't know ever that they were a really bad person, and that's why the attack happened. So entities exactly that. Exactly that. So, you know, there's loads of different ways of doing this. And I have 4 4 players in my game at the moment. All 4 of them have complex back stories that they only know part of
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Dr Dean Marshall: and you know you have to Fe figure ways as a DM of kind of, you know, salting the little clues about backstory in there, and you can do it a load of different ways. That's an interesting cause. That's that's another point I want to get onto is
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John Padden: in my current game at the moment. It's a narrative game. It's also it's about to do the research on name conventions and things like that, but it's basing it off of kind of almost like a common system of obviously in day and day. You've got good neutral evil, and you've got lawful and chaotic, and it's
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John Padden: as you go on this journey. You can take these characters at face value because you've got a description when you first met them.
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John Padden: and then you can talk to like a tab and owner and learn a bit about them, and you choose who gets in your party. Then how much more do you confess to them? Are they just in your party to help you get your own goal, or are you gonna be the sort of play that communicates with them? And if you do communicate with them, you're gonna find out more about them. You then gonna go. That explains why they're this way. Why, this one's this way. You can also then go in between 2 of these party members and the like.
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John Padden: They're struggling to see eye to eye for whatever reason. So you've got a cancu. They're not really good with language, and and they're getting like
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John Padden: excited around the dwarf artificer and the dwarf artifices just interested in the cancu's 2 blades because he wants to know who's made them and and what they're made of.
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John Padden: but if you bring them together, they they can actually form a really good friendship. Where, at the end of the mission, the Kenku can have the dwarven artificial buildings and mechanical wings to make all these loss of wings and just interested things like that. So what I'm interested now is, how do you telegraph
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John Padden: a bit? Necessity for conversation in your games, when you're wanting your plays to learn a bit more backstory rather than face value, or learn a bit more about themselves and their own backstory or each other, even in in the game as well.
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John Padden: What particular techniques would you say?
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah. So in terms of learning from each other. I'm quite lucky with my group, because they are, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: W. We're we're friends outside of the game, which is nice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it means that people are like invested in each other's characters. So during character creation
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Dr Dean Marshall: we, we did this completely separately. So I'm not the type of DM to organize a game and say, you know, there's already a fighter in the group. You can't be a fighter, or there's already an Orc in the group. You can't be an Orc or something. I let people because I don't wanna squash people's creativity or passion and things like that. You know, the reason they make a character is because they want to play that character interesting to them. So if I start to add any kind of you know, bootstrapping or regulation on
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Dr Dean Marshall: how they create the character. Then it's just gonna you know. Maybe they'll begrudge them eventually, or something, or want to get rid of them or whatever. So so we did them completely, separately, individually,
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Dr Dean Marshall: And then what I did as a DM. Again behind the scenes, without them knowing it is tied their back stories to each other. So I actually think it's interesting when you reveal something about a backstory from character A, but it's character B that reveals it or finds out about it from somebody else or something, and it can be as simple as you know. I don't like to do this like shoehorning like I said earlier, but it can be as simple as
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Dr Dean Marshall: one of them's gone to the market, and another one's gone to the tavern, you know. This classic split the party situation, and somebody in the tavern approaches Character B, and says like, Oh, so you're hanging out with character. A, you know, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't really like their I don't really like their kind, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: 20 years ago this happened blah blah blah blah blah. And so it creates an interesting.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess social moment for the group like, does Character B, go and approach character? A. With that knowledge and say, like, Oh, did you know this like what's happened. And so, you know, socially, I like to add
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Dr Dean Marshall: complexity, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: and have linked back stories as well, even if they don't know the linked at first. Obviously
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it kind of creates like a mutual goal as well, because I think there's nothing worse in a game where
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Dr Dean Marshall: Players have conflicting goals, and it creates a lot of tension, and it creates a lot of kind of it's why I don't often advise that you know half the players be good aligned, and half the players be evil aligned. It's like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: what are you going to do every time there's a bandit approach on the road and say, Pay at all, or you have to go past. And then the Paladin says like, Well, we've got the money we should pay, and the you know. Warlock just
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Dr Dean Marshall: smashes an Eldridge blast in a bandit's face like. And we've had these in games. And yeah, they're interesting. But
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John Padden: the predictable at the same time, you know, like, you're always gonna have that. Good evening competitiveness between players rather than yeah.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you want it to be a collaborative effort and game and stuff like that. And so yeah, I try to do it narratively. I try to do it in
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Dr Dean Marshall: in social kind of like role play, style conversations,
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Dr Dean Marshall: and also like even things like combat. Like, I think I think a lot of dungeon masters underestimate the value in combat as a narrative tool in a game. and so like
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Dr Dean Marshall: flashbacks are your kind of classic one. But let's say.
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Dr Dean Marshall: character. A sees character. B, like kill someone in a certain way in a fight.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it'll give them during combat like a quick flashback like, Oh, I've seen somebody like you do something like that in the past, and it reminded me of this specific place in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it can just be as simple as saying to the character like you get a feeling to. You know
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Dr Dean Marshall: they have something to do with that area of the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So you know, or it can be like the last dying words of someone in combat like like, Oh, you just like your father, and then that they get killed, you know, and it's like you can you can, is it? Is it? Good? DM,
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Dr Dean Marshall: I think you've just got to be ready to to
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Dr Dean Marshall: add to that backstory salt any at any point, you know, rather than just like Oh, it's the mysterious old guy that approached this from nowhere. Cause again, it's a cliche, and it's like, how does this guy know everything about it's like, doesn't work like that for me. It's interesting. So I always I was.
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John Padden: What I'm trying to do now is like trying to make the equivalent in narrative gameplay, which is like Ctrpg. In a sense of your reading the description to the guys, you're given the ideas, the guys verbally.
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John Padden: if you were playing a digital game, it's like, Oh, I need to go to that bookshelf over there and pick up that book because it will be blowing, or it'll be highlighted. You can get away with that a little bit in
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John Padden: narrative games because you can go. You've entered an old wizards library. Everything looks normal. It's dusty. There's loads of books. However, one of you gets a feeling of a strange or recommend from one of the books that's you going back down into that that short cook kind of way of dealing with things, whereas, like you say, like.
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John Padden: you don't, wanna you don't want that to be the first stage of giving the players information. You want that to be the last one, when all these other little breakcomes haven't worked. And but yeah. So it's I think. Ii have got some really good advice about that, and it's not my advice. It's the advice of
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James, that dungeon master that was in the Zoo group, and he basically says, You know, you're rolling for things right? You know, and and long story short, high roles are good, low roles are bad, but don't treat them as a binary. Don't treat them as an all or nothing, and you can treat them as a scale like they actually are.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And also it doesn't necessarily translate to do you find it, or do you not? You know. Oh, damn! You! Only rolled a 12,
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and the DC. Check was the 13. Which means you don't find the book. Well, no.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, if it's really important for the story, or for you know you've set this this particular item, or something up for for weeks, then
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Dr Dean Marshall: then they will find it. But if they roll the dice and it's a lower number. It's gonna take them a little bit longer to find it. Or maybe you know, an enemy will get in the way, and they'll have to do a short combat before they do find it, you know. Yeah, exactly. If if they roll, if they roll and they get a 20, yeah, and not 20. Then then, yeah, it's the payoff, because they just, you know, they that's when they feel like
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Dr Dean Marshall: attuned to that item, and they spot it out of a thousand books, you know, like that's that's a payoff for them. But regardless, I think I think this is something which DM's don't necessarily play on, and it can kind of slow a game down is the illusion of choice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, like people are rolling dice, and and that's based on chance. But if they have to find something, the dice roll just tells you how they find it doesn't tell you if they find it or not. So I did this in my very, very I did. I used the illusion of choice, my very, very first
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Dr Dean Marshall: game that I was ever a dungeon master, for because I set up a puzzle situation where there was 4 doors, and like how you interacted with these kind of like torches on the walls, would change what the door looked like. And so, from an outside perspective.
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Dr Dean Marshall: they had to do a puzzle and work out where the door leads, based on what it looks like
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Dr Dean Marshall: So they were kind of, you know. One of them was like a green flame, and it was like a forest, and the other almost like a red flame. It was like lava and shit, you know, like, so basically
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Dr Dean Marshall: it looks like they have a choice very early on in the game. Where are you going to appear in the world? Map?
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Dr Dean Marshall: Actually, whatever happened was, it didn't matter what flame they chose. All it was was a skin of a of a town. The town was always the exact same. The town, you know. They were going to appear in the cellar of a tavern in a town when they go through that door, whether it's a tavern that's in a town surrounded by lava. It's a tavern that's in a town surrounded by like forest.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's the same town. It's just flavor, basically. So I gave. I gave the players the illusion of choice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: it took them a good kind of like 20 min as a group to say, like, you know, well, you're a forest gnome, and you know you're a whatever. I think we should go this way, because maybe you're gonna be really good in that environment, whatever. So it occupied them got them thinking. Remember, it's session one as well. So it got them bonding really like what? You what you good at, what you good at, you know. Who are you? Basically and and then the
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I'm sat there as a dungeon. Master being like this is great, you know, like the the learning about each other, the
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know they're escaping an imminent imminent threat as well. So there is kind of a time pressure, and they made the choice, and I kind of left it as a cliffhanger. Anyway, like, where are you going to be, you know, when you come out the door? So it gave me a week to plan the place, but it was always the same place, you know it was. It was just me getting narrative. No, no.
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John Padden: that's one of the one things I'm I'm struggling with in my game is while I know that I've got to have
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John Padden: telegraphing, telegraphing. importance of conversation. so you can go up to the the tavern owner and be like. can you give me some extra information about these guys or not.
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John Padden: and if they don't, it's
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John Padden: I'm using that as like, cause. It's like the first chapter of the game. I'm using that as kind of a key takeaway where
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John Padden: you then go up to the players and talk to them and learn a bit about them. If you haven't spoken to the taven owner beforehand, it's like a short paragraph, but if you have, it's a big one, but because you don't see the other option.
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John Padden: the outcome of the eruption you weren't aware. But I still need to telegraph that important knowledge. So you just drop a little line in their life.
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John Padden: I wonder if I'd have spoken to the Tabernacle in a first, if we could've got a bit more information, because we're all in there the whole time just something simple like that. And then every chance for conversation after that is kind of like
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John Padden: right? We could do this a different way, you know. Just let them learn by.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess. I guess I guess, to to bring psychology into it. Specifically, we could think about behaviorist methods of learning. So like
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Dr Dean Marshall: like operant conditioning. So the fact that like, if they did stuff beforehand
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Dr Dean Marshall: more often than not, they get
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Dr Dean Marshall: better dialogue, and they get like more clues. Sometimes it might be items, rewards whatever, and if they don't, then more often than not, the conversations are short, people are, say like, Well, I don't even know who you are like, you know? And so you might let your players learn that over time, and then eventually their behavior would change to test out the theories like, if I speak to more people, does it work? And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: you don't always have to be obvious. You don't always have to sign post. you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: yes. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: I suppose I should make a a specific reference to like psychology. And and and
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know how I use my, I guess we could call it expertise in being a dungeon master and so I'm a cognitive psychologist. And so I study things like thought processes and my areas decision making. But it includes things like problem solving
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Dr Dean Marshall: And and of course, I take things from my academic space, and I apply it in
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Dr Dean Marshall: like a campaign setting.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But often it's in small details. It's like, like you've just said, actually like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I studied this thing called like Bayesian reasoning, or or or Bayes rule, which means that the degree in your belief of something happening
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Dr Dean Marshall: it should change when you learn new information, which is kind of what you talk about that
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John Padden: and
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John Padden: changes
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Dr Dean Marshall: your behavior. Yeah, it should do. It should do for a lot of people. But in in in my research, I study the conjunction fallacy, which is like when people are judging things like probabilities of things happening together, they get information related to the conjunction, and instead of
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Dr Dean Marshall: adjusting their probabilities in line with Bayes rule. So instead of doing it in a way which is kind of proportional if you will
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Dr Dean Marshall: like, oh, I learned a tiny bit of information. I'll change my belief by a tiny bit.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Instead. It will be like, I learned a bit of information, and I'm going to rely so much of my judgment on that new information that I'm just going to make errors on my new judgments. So
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John Padden: is there a variable there on where they learn that information from, though. And I'm going. I'm going into like Milgram studies. Now, where.
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John Padden: if you learn that from information from someone who seems to be a superior or a more knowledgeable source of information. Is that potential variable for that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, could be. Technically, it's not something cause in in cognitive. What we, what we try to do
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Dr Dean Marshall: is isolate the effects of the independent variables. Right? So. And we tried to do that to establish calls and effects like, you know, the II really really test the impact of the
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Dr Dean Marshall: background information
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Dr Dean Marshall: which is independent of who says the background information? Basically? So yeah, I do that in in in order to infer cause and effect between
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Dr Dean Marshall: what evidence has been presented and what judgment they make.
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And
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Dr Dean Marshall: you're talking about blending things like cognitive with social psychology. And that is yes. Who does it come from? So you might get the exact same information, but depending on who it comes from, that could influence how you perceive it, and therefore make a judgment. It definitely could. I'm not aware of the literature about it, or or a result on it right now. But it's basic social psychology, you know. We're not only influenced by like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, who is there? We're influenced by things as simple as how many people are there. And also, really, interestingly, this might be something for you to think about somewhere in your game design is
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Dr Dean Marshall: social. Psychology is so pervasive that we're even influenced by the
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Dr Dean Marshall: idea that there is other people
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Dr Dean Marshall: around or thinking about this thing, or doing this thing, or whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: or the implied presence of others. even if it's not there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: even if it is not there at all. So as an example, they you could run like a computer simulation of a game where it looks like you're playing against another person.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's actually a computer
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Dr Dean Marshall: and so obviously, they can manipulate how the computer plays and things like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you
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can't remember it exactly. But you can essentially manipulate these kind of games where it looks like
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Dr Dean Marshall: be playing against like 10 people or something like that. And people where where is always you're playing against computer, you know. Always it's determined what what the game is going to play in response to you.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and people's behavior like drastically changes, they start to like lose confidence in themselves, they start to like.
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make really quick and bad judgments and things like that. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: also, things like perceived expertise. If if if let's imagine you're
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Dr Dean Marshall: in a pub quiz scenario, and you're told oh, by the way, the other person's an expert in this thing, so you know. Good luck.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know. You basically stop trying. You kind of admit defeat, you know
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John Padden: imagined opponents
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John Padden: where, if you come second out of 2 people, or if you come 100 out of 100 people, you dead last in both scenarios. But you're not gonna have. It's not gonna have as much of a detrimental effect on you. If you come second out of 2 people.
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John Padden: then 100 500 people, because you're like, there's a vast number of people that have beaten me here. Whereas in the other scenario, just one person beating me. Yeah, yeah. And there's very. There's very basic
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Dr Dean Marshall: social psychology. About
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Dr Dean Marshall: the numbers of people that are involved in things. And so you can look at social, low finger literature which basically implies if we're on a team, we start to, you know, not pull our weight literally. In some cases there's like a tug of war version of this experiment where you know that you met. They measured people's strength
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Dr Dean Marshall: individually. and then, when they put them in a team all on the same kind of like tug of war thing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: think about it it should. This pulling strength should be the sum of their individual strengths. It wasn't normally like the mean or something like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Well, no, no, it falls in proportion to how many people are on the team.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So like one person stood on their own, they basically give it maximum effort.
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 people pull in the rope they both give, let's say, maybe 99 or 98% of their effort. 3 people, 97 or 96%. You know, by the time you have, like 10 people stood on a rope pulling it.
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Dr Dean Marshall: the total amount of strength or power they pull. It's like 90 or less percent of what you'd expect if you just subconscious thing as well, are they like uniquely aware that they're doing that? It's probably subconscious. Yeah, because, I'm not sure if they asked for like a report on it a self report afterwards about like
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know how much effort we put in? I imagine people would report that they were putting in as much effort as when they're on their own but now that's that. The the literature shows that people don't, and it's called social loafing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So it's a it's it's a finding that kind of branches between social and sports psychology.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And and yeah, you know this, I say this to my students all the time. You know, if you think that corporations which are thousands of employees don't already know about these things, or put research into these things and kind of divide people up into smaller and smaller teams rather than you and a thousand others are trying to work on this problem.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But a thousand others are trying to work in it like
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John Padden: cool, and I'll just sit back and do as little as possible. There's that fable about the village where they wanna make a nice fountain in the middle of it's common, right? The very phone and everything. And
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John Padden: they're like, we just want everyone in the village to put a glass of milk into the fountain, so they will just have milk coming out of it, and one person goes well, if there's loads of places. I just put glass of water, and it'll be fine. So so yeah, social loafing is is, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: adjusting your effort on the basis of
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Dr Dean Marshall: the presence of other people. And then there's also things like diffusion of responsibility. So like, that's the pressure you feel as an individual when something happens in a social situation. So yeah, if it's just you one on one with, you know, people? In a competitive situation. Then, yeah, if you fail, it's all your fault, isn't it? You know. And it's the same with helping behavior. You know. You stood on a train and someone collapses, and you're the only one there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: All of the pressure of that situation is on you to help.
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But if there's 10 other people there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know slight hesitancy, and you might be off the hook.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so people often kind of like to
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Dr Dean Marshall: literally diffuse the responsibility onto other people. So yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing to play into potential. You know, game design is like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: just kinda like, what are other people doing in the world? I'm gonna
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Dr Dean Marshall: say that I do use cognitive psychology in.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I just use my knowledge of things like perception and attention in the way that I would like, determine
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Dr Dean Marshall: how a dice roll would work, or or what the outcome of a dice role would be.
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John Padden: just to enhance the story.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, I dig into my character. You know, I really
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Dr Dean Marshall: like. I say, when I'm playing that Zorag, that Harpo barbarian like stupidity is his thing. So even if I know
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Dr Dean Marshall: something wouldn't work, I'm gonna try it, you know, because he would try it. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: so I think that's really really useful to know about. Now, I don't.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm going to combine some areas there. So the cognitive psychology. It helps me because it helps me organize things like puzzles in the game, you know, quite often.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it all. It helps me organize things like
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you know just
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Dr Dean Marshall: how or why somebody might do something as an individual.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But what it doesn't really help me with is like larger scale game planning or campaign.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't help me with world building, really, to be honest with you. What helps me more with that is like world history. So I've had to learn a lot about world history.
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Dr Dean Marshall: politics, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and also just like law from other places. So I said, I mentioned earlier that I was a very casual fan of Lord of the Rings at 1 point. Now I'm much more than a casual fan of it, because I've been reading not only the books, but also the law behind the books and things like that, and
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John Padden: have it done the what? Sorry? The walk?
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Dr Dean Marshall: No, no, he well, he was. He was a professor, Bob, and there's a walk he could go on. Which is the walks. He used to go on when he was right. Well, I'm gonna
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Dr Dean Marshall: I've got another thing going to do. List. So yeah. But II really enjoy things like mi the mythology behind. Like like II learn a lot, and I gain a lot
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Dr Dean Marshall: of for my games by adapting mythology. And so I think so. Mythology
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Dr Dean Marshall: history, you know you're not going to run out of scenarios or things that happen. But I think that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: combining that with with one of the greatest piece of devices I was ever given as a as a DM. Or a player was by James again, that DM. James, James, Captur villa, right is go. So yeah, it's
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Dr Dean Marshall: phenomenal phenomenal. DM, And
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Dr Dean Marshall: he told me,
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you only know one thing about a person, just the one thing so it could be a character you create. It could be an Npc. It could be the biggest bad guy of your entire campaign, whatever it's motivation. So because if you know that motivation like, write it down, make sure it's the the highlights of that person's notes basically cause motivation.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You've you've got. You've got how they act. You've got what they're gonna do in the world. You've got how they're gonna respond to people cause a lot of Dmn is responding.
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John Padden: And if you don't respond appropriately, according to that person's motivational personality, or whatever you wanna call it, then it kind of feels unprepared or disconnected, or, you know, like internally inconsistent things like that. I've got it onto Google drive now, it's just poor quality. But I'll send it across to you. But they
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John Padden: the narrative lead narrative designer from Boulders Gate free. That was a the games fest earlier in the week.
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John Padden: They would they were talking over a scene that they don't. II don't know if you play boulders gate free at all. You you would love it, you know. It's about right. Yeah, but it's
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John Padden: There's one character that you made at a certain point in time, and she showed the first draft of like the conversation that she has with you, and then your 2 responses, and it's very
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John Padden: dull because it's like it's a yes or no. It's very binary or response to it, but
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John Padden: she breaks it down into like when you're crafting the character life is that you have. You have the character, you have you as a designer, and then you have the player as well, and you wanna merge those into like some sort of end diagram where the the middle, where they all intersect with each other, is the perfect place to be, and she was clearly talking about it. When it comes to the psychology of
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John Padden: the Npc. It is absolutely their motivation drives them. It it. It shows how they will talk to a player, and whether they're dismissive or inviting, and
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John Padden: how they act, and then from that
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John Padden: you you give your, you make the player have available choices based on that because they will. Then also, even in D and D,
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John Padden: they're gonna act in a certain way, because of the history of the world, the law between the 2 races, all these interactions that come from real world like we interact with each other in a certain way. We're probably at this conversation. We're probably spoken in quite
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John Padden: affluent academic terminology as opposed to. If we just met someone
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John Padden: down the street. And
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John Padden: and it's quite interesting. I think that's
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John Padden: where. Wanna then tie in and and start drawing. This to a conclusion is. if we then take the scenario of games like Ttrpgs and things like that, and start using that as a construct towards therapeutic
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John Padden: psychology. And again, like you say, with the care given and things like that is what advantages do we have from using Ttrpgs as a construct? Obviously we saw a lot of the
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John Padden: the positives from it during things like you mentioned before in the pandemic, because a lot of us were drawn to our towards it, even though we went in the presence of others. That idea of being in the presence of what was through digital formats like this, with teams and zoom calls and stuff, it was able for us to connect and kind of forget about the worries in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yes, so
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I think.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Well, I'll I'll down to that one in a second, because I think if you. If you have the motivation of like, let's say at person. It could be a king of a empire, or whatever, or you've got the motivation of, and you base that on a political system. So that would be a monarchy.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And then so you know how that works, you know, like there's royal blood there, and you know, might be a divine whatever you know. Blah blah blah! And then there's a separate political system at the other side of the world
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Dr Dean Marshall: which is based on a constitutional democracy. So those people are elected. Now, of course, you can have, you know, problems in that and all these things. But they have a different motivation. So I think the way these political powers go about
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Dr Dean Marshall: organizing themselves in the world
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Dr Dean Marshall: can really change their behavior in the world, you know. So I think something to think about as a DM. And this is where I'm going to move on to the therapeutic side in a second is that like.
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show your players
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Dr Dean Marshall: behavior in the world like the village that got overrun or attacked whatever that's that's a behaviour. It's an action that happened in the world. What the players do not know
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Dr Dean Marshall: is the reason they don't know the motivation behind. Why it happened. It could be
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Dr Dean Marshall: scorched Earth tactics. It could be a complete eradication, a genocide for political, religious. You name. It reasons, you know, from either of those powers in the world, but they don't know about it, and so I think it's very useful to.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, in some instances treat the
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Dr Dean Marshall: campaign or game a little bit like a murder mystery like you've seen what has happened, or you might even
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Dr Dean Marshall: witness it happen, or or or take part in stopping or changing something happening. But there still is a motivation behind it, and there still is a consistent motivation behind it. I think the idea of purely good or purely bad is
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Dr Dean Marshall: not very useful. I'm a I'm a personally, I'm a moral relativist.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I like to write into my games, good people doing bad things, yeah, you know. And likewise the other way around bad people doing good things. Because on the face of it, you know, my players might kind of associate from an early interaction like, Oh, these guys! You know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: they sent a dragon to destroy this monument or do whatever, and that's a bad thing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But if they don't understand the motivation behind it, or maybe even what the monument was, you know. Maybe it was
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Dr Dean Marshall: a powering device, for, like a an evil entity, or a god, or whatever, or or it was draining some power from somewhere, or whatever. You know, I think it's useful for the players to go on kind of a learning journey as well.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And I think that's much more interesting than the than the you know. The person with horns is evil. Let's let's go and just power up and kill the evil person, because it's like, Well, what is evil, you know? Why are they doing what they're doing? And maybe the person who's got a halo hanging over the head.
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you know, in the name of their God.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know.
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John Padden: eradicated an entire nation like a a a. Are they evil, you know. Are you going to revolt against them, or whatever I think so, some of the best stories that we see are
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John Padden: it's always that. It's where you see a villain have a redemption arc.
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John Padden: and things like that where you see
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John Padden: they they were motivated to do the the evil things they did in a certain way.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and they've have. They're now have to question their own motives, yeah, or, like, you know, for the greater good, you know, I think this so interested to have a variety of those things going on in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and essentially let your players determine ultimately what they want to do so. Don't tell them who the bad guy is. Just don't do it, you know. Have 4 or 5 potential bad guys, but not all kind of evil, outwardly evil. Let the players decide sort of like what they, as a group really care about or really want to take an active role at in the world, and also something to, just as DM. Advice here is that if the players sit still for a while,
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Dr Dean Marshall: The world should move on, you know. Let let the world move on. Have a plan again, based on motivation. Have a plan for those people in the world doing stuff. So sometimes you don't have to let the story approach the players rather than the other way around. If they're kind of just taking it very casually. Now, I will bring this onto this kind of therapeutic side of things. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: yeah, there's a lot of research on the benefits of gaming, generally speaking. But then Ttrpg's or collaborative gaming. Part of it is a social element, you know, and people tend to. You know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess do better. When when they're in groups. Generally. I was wondering if there's a social thing behind that, because you always see
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John Padden: our colleagues anonymous, for instance, they the convention is if it's your first time that you're probably not gonna tell people your issues.
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Dr Dean Marshall: but by listening to other people in the ring. Talk about it over the progressing weeks, you're gonna feel more inclined to then share your your thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we are social animals. You know, we we do very well in groups, is one of the only defined psychological needs rather than a want is is the need of belonging. So we don't do well alone. You know we don't. That kind of Lone Wolf
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Dr Dean Marshall: like, you know, stereotype. It's not very accurate at all, you know, the Lone Wolf would be a very
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Dr Dean Marshall: sad, potentially or or damaged person. You know, we do. Well, socially, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And you know, in terms of evolutionary biology, it's beneficial for us to be
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Dr Dean Marshall: social to be liked by other people. You know, there's a reason why things like social desirability bias exists where we we try to present a good version of ourselves to other people, or a likeable version, or whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: cause. It's beneficial to us and our survival. So you know th there's that element of it. But I think that if you, as a DM. And you were qualified in sort of like varieties of of therapy or or counselling.
400
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Dr Dean Marshall: and you really could use the narrative situations or the stories that you would develop as as psychological interventions. And so you know, as an example, let's just take a really common
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Dr Dean Marshall: things such as catastrophizing. So as an individual it might be. One thing goes wrong, and it's kind of like, oh, you know, everything's
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John Padden: awful. The world's hates me and all these kind of things. You just mentioned before, where, with the hot ace, if you get the A, you recognize it more often. Is that like the reversal of that where, if you see something bad happening.
403
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John Padden: you notice more bad things happening, and then the world collapses around you. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely about kind of how you would affirm the situation. So
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you know, part of Cbt cognitive behavioral therapy is identifying these kind of erroneous thought patterns, or or purely negative thought patterns, and reframing them.
405
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So as an example.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you could present the person with. So the person has a character with an Npc. In the game who is catastrophizing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You know you. You go into the tavern
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Dr Dean Marshall: and you ask for a drink, and the person says, Car, you know what's the point, cause like, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: like a dragon, a dragon came and attacked, and like there's no point selling these things. There's no point doing this. The world's ending. It's the worst. Well, and the person's kind of saying, Well, you kind of just want a drink, you know, like, surely there's
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John Padden: we still need to go with things, you know. I'm thirsty, but it's amazing that you mentioned that because one of my previous bits of research was into
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John Padden: a female actress, and she's made a film well, documentary film about this as well, because she was subject to sexual abuse in our home country, and
412
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John Padden: after developing the documentary film, she then went on to make a game because she looked at the statistics of
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John Padden: females that were given sexual abuse on online games. And like, 63% of females would hide their gender while playing. And 98% of them had experience some sort of abuse online playing. And so she crafted the game again, similar to what you say, where
414
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John Padden: your
415
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John Padden: companion through the game is someone who's suffered it, and you end up taking this support role. And it kind of shows
416
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John Padden: male game is like.
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John Padden: Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna prove this to you on your own turf. And you're gonna realize, like this is what these women are subject to. So maybe the next time is presented to you. If there's an opportunity, or is someone else acting that way, you might defend
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John Padden: the more often. I'll try and put a stop to it more often having having that Npc guide kind of way of doing it is definitely.
419
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John Padden: and it fits more with
420
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John Padden: very much on topic. But yeah.
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Dr Dean Marshall: it it it. It gives you a chance to step outside of your own personal situation and do things like empathize with a situation or an individual and then it can kind of build a problem solving
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Dr Dean Marshall: process which doesn't feel personal, you know. So yeah, that's that's kind of. you know, one of them or another one another one would be like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I mean, it's similar to cast catastrophizing, but it's like assuming knowledge. So you know, a lot of people who struggle from mental health difficulties, especially like anxiety disorders assume knowledge or emotions, or whatever, on behalf of other people. So they'll say things like
424
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Dr Dean Marshall: everybody hates me.
425
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Dr Dean Marshall: Well, that's a very common phrase, or you know I'm worthless. And you ask, why would you say that? Or because I don't do anything. But okay, well, you know, where would you get that impression? Or because somebody called me worthless once, you know, they called me like
426
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Dr Dean Marshall: Crap at my job, or whatever. Okay. Well, you know, has everybody you've ever worked with said that, you know, like there's a there's a question in process. So you could imagine that like
427
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you took the that scenario and had it in an in an Npc. Or something, and you know, not in a derogatory way. But it might be someone who is kind of like
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Dr Dean Marshall: a bit conspiratorial and a bit like paranoid about a certain situation, and
429
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Dr Dean Marshall: and and maybe their behavior had changed, and people were concerned about them. And so the person who's concerned about them is another Npc. They would approach the character and say, like, you know, Oh, my
430
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Dr Dean Marshall: friend, he's sometimes he's really correct. And he told me about this prophecy once, and you know it was correct, and it was really useful. But
431
01:18:06.340 --> 01:18:08.710
Dr Dean Marshall: he's he's convinced that there's a
432
01:18:09.440 --> 01:18:19.360
Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know. He's convinced that there's an evil cult or something. Do you know what I mean? Like like he, he! He's assuming knowledge or assuming whatever, but there's no evidence of it. And
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Dr Dean Marshall: and he says it's in a certain place. But he needs you to go check it out, basically. So you'd go. You turn it into a mission. Don't you go? You go looking for evidence of things that
434
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Dr Dean Marshall: doesn't exist, and you bring back to him
435
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Dr Dean Marshall: like essentially no evidence. You say we've checked it out. Why would do you think that? Why don't we go there together? It's safe, blah, blah, blah. So there's I think there's ways that a good
436
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Dr Dean Marshall: qualified individual could organize situations in the world which would help the person
437
01:18:51.550 --> 01:18:54.929
Dr Dean Marshall: who who? Who's suffering a bit kind of
438
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Dr Dean Marshall: tackle these
439
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Dr Dean Marshall: like potential problems in a way which is safe in a way which is collaborative. It might also include the examples from other people. So if there's if you've got 3 or 4 people sat at a table or playing a collaborative game. You know, sometimes you don't have the answer, but somebody else might. And you know oh, I never thought of that. Yeah, let's go do that or something, you know, can be really, really
440
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Dr Dean Marshall: useful.
441
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Dr Dean Marshall: So so yeah, you know, I just think
442
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Dr Dean Marshall: it. It is an area that is researched not my particular area. II think another great one, you know, is is such things as moral development, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's like you said about the you know person who'd experienced kind of like, you know, sexual objectification or or assault like it's hard for people to empathize properly
444
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Dr Dean Marshall: if they've never experienced that sort of thing, or had to deal with it or had to support someone. And so, you know, as an example. You might get somebody who's very
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess you could call them authoritarian or something. You know the weak deserve to be weak and die, and all of these things, and the strong, only the strongest survive, and whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: which is a which is a moral claim fundamentally so, you might put them into a situation in the game where they actually find out about a person, a group, whatever it is.
447
01:20:25.220 --> 01:20:29.100
Dr Dean Marshall: that are kind of. you know, subjugated to
448
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Dr Dean Marshall: like all kinds of terrors, through no fault of their own. through what race they are, or how they were born into the world. What class they are, you know you name it. What what gender they are, and what's even more interesting
449
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Dr Dean Marshall: is, if you flip the narrative so they aren't in a
450
01:20:50.060 --> 01:20:52.910
Dr Dean Marshall: what they see as like a morally superior point.
451
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Dr Dean Marshall: So you know, their race is the one which is kind of frowned upon. Or you know.
452
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John Padden: I think you've got to be careful, obviously, like you said to not kind of. When you look at the studies that are being done.
453
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John Padden: It's even with those dragons. It's always done by practitioners off
454
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John Padden: therapy, if you like. The idea of
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John Padden: when you go on about discrimination of racist within DD and stuff like that. The idea of I don't include. I've seen it, but there was like a comic strip once about it, and it was, I don't know if it was related to Einstein's
456
01:21:27.390 --> 01:21:31.060
John Padden: phrase or sentence that he's made at some point where
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01:21:31.240 --> 01:21:44.730
John Padden: you've got like a bunch of animals lined up, and it's like the test will start in 5 min, and the test is which one of you can climb the tree the fastest, and you've got like a monkey, an elephant, a goldfish in a fish bowl. It's obviously the test isn't determinative of
458
01:21:44.780 --> 01:21:58.139
John Padden: them as as as individuals. So in there, where it's like, you know, names are discriminated because they're so small, and then if you pull them, if you pull
459
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Dr Dean Marshall: the play character in a world where everything's that Alice in Wonderland, where everything's they become the problem because they don't fit in. And and you know you can. I think this is the beauty of something like Dnd, because it's so creative is that if you
460
01:22:13.780 --> 01:22:24.360
Dr Dean Marshall: organize it properly as a DM. You you could fit anything into that social social situation so like, let's say, as an example, you wanted to kind of like work on
461
01:22:24.550 --> 01:22:42.240
Dr Dean Marshall: the person's perception of money, or like, maybe in a therapy session, it turned out that they were doing things like sabotaging personal relationships in the pursuit of money. You know they were working too much, and they were putting too much value on materialistic things.
462
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, it might be something in your game that you work through in a series of sessions. How you show that you know a person who in this kind of kingdom is like Mega Mega, mega mega rich?
463
01:22:55.150 --> 01:23:00.809
Dr Dean Marshall: and you know essentially you go in and get down the lines of
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01:23:01.010 --> 01:23:07.360
Dr Dean Marshall: I guess personifying them based on one of the 7 deadly sins. It is so greed.
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John Padden: So you know, I know a campaign that's purely based on the 7 deadly sins. You were saying about mythology. There's a lot of people that do use even the 4 horsemen of death for the 7 deadly scenes.
466
01:23:18.810 --> 01:23:33.739
Dr Dean Marshall: almost mythological way of thinking of things. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you'd you'd you'd stick the player into a situation where money is is a negative thing, and you'd obviously in, you'd do it in a in a structured and
467
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess, academic way where you'd you'd have evidence to show problems with money, and you might even think you might even you could explore all sorts. You could explore capitalism as a as a much wider concept there, and about the abuses of
468
01:23:49.140 --> 01:23:56.660
Dr Dean Marshall: different races. Or you know the fact that nobody ever becomes ultra wealthy without.
469
01:23:57.050 --> 01:23:58.100
you know.
470
01:23:58.240 --> 01:24:01.190
Dr Dean Marshall: a lot more people being abused
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01:24:01.230 --> 01:24:16.660
Dr Dean Marshall: to generate that wealth. So you know, if the person's never had to deal with that. They've just grown up in a capitalistic society where, like shiny, expensive things are thrust in front of their face, and they never see the slavery. They never see the, you know death.
472
01:24:16.760 --> 01:24:18.669
Dr Dean Marshall: Then it could be a
473
01:24:18.730 --> 01:24:21.189
Dr Dean Marshall: safe place to
474
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John Padden: explore those topics, you know. Well, there's something to be said of keeping it in a fancy world as well.
475
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John Padden: because there is a link between. When it was when they were studying in the eighties and the nineties, and they were trying to portray this idea of violence and video games causes violence in real life. Where is more contemporary studies have proven it not to be the case. It's to do with the competitiveness element and the raised chemicals in the bodies from that is this idea that when questioning in young kids about shooting in video games and causing violence and video games. So like, do you know, that's wrong? Why did you do it? And they go? Well, of course it's wrong.
476
01:24:56.090 --> 01:24:57.490
John Padden: but I know it's not real.
477
01:24:57.580 --> 01:25:20.220
John Padden: It's a fantasy place. There's a different set of rules and laws there that don't apply to me here, and that's in conjunction with like a fantasy world is you don't have to be yourself, and so you don't have to get triggered. You don't have to take any of that trauma outside. And it's one thing that I've personally found from from therapies how exhausting is feelings and stuff in such a direct way.
478
01:25:20.220 --> 01:25:40.510
John Padden: whereas if you were to take it into a fancy world where it's not necessarily the problems that you talk about yours. But you seen it in someone else. We all wanna help someone more more than face our own problems. And then another thing is is when we talk about studies, that being done is a there's a a, a lecture on the games design course.
479
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John Padden: and I keep getting referred to her because she did stuff with veterans, and she was trying to get them to do it, transformative game for them and into society. And they were just like no.
480
01:25:51.470 --> 01:26:00.139
John Padden: which is quite interesting, because they just want to play shooter games wanna play any other sort of game. Now, one of the things they talk about when you're doing a game.
481
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John Padden: a transformative game is reactants vary, which is, if I say to you, Dean, can you go turn light on? I'm giving you a command you're going to like
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John Padden: no like or like, you know, when you when you say I've got to do this task, you more likely not to do it because you say you've got to do it. Whereas if you say I get to do it, I get in this environment. And I get to achieve these things. It's a different way of analyzing the situation. And so it was interesting for me then, seeing how it didn't work with the soldiers because they're so used to doing as they're told with the general population
483
01:26:32.600 --> 01:26:45.490
Dr Dean Marshall: like to be told what today? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I think that's part of the rationale for having a qualified person in charge of that situation, because, you know, as part of the training they'll they'll
484
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Dr Dean Marshall: basically spot, look out for and try and correct through the conversation. Specific words that are being used so like as an example, you know, if if the person is is calling themselves worthless, or something like they'd
485
01:27:01.380 --> 01:27:03.820
Dr Dean Marshall: they did pull them up on that.
486
01:27:03.930 --> 01:27:11.010
Dr Dean Marshall: And and language is a language is a powerful tool. So outside of outside of
487
01:27:11.390 --> 01:27:22.570
Dr Dean Marshall: you know. And I think psychology or DD related. I'm a vegetarian, and what I found as a really strong tool
488
01:27:22.690 --> 01:27:30.500
Dr Dean Marshall: to keep me vegetarian, basically for a number of years is that I don't say, I can't eat meat
489
01:27:30.880 --> 01:27:48.289
Dr Dean Marshall: cause that's kind of like denying or you know, it feels like, yeah, yeah. I say, I don't eat meat, because it puts the onus on mean ball, you know, and it's and it's more of a a moral statement than than a
490
01:27:48.560 --> 01:27:56.590
Dr Dean Marshall: command from elsewhere. Yeah, I can't eat. Meat is very different than I don't eat meat, so I always use the phrase, I don't eat meat.
491
01:27:56.680 --> 01:27:59.520
Dr Dean Marshall: And it's kind of reinforces my
492
01:28:00.040 --> 01:28:21.520
John Padden: behavior. So yeah, language is incredibly powerful. It's like you were saying before about the whole that the individual that thinks they're worthless, and they think everyone thinks they're worthless because they were told at one time, simply changing it from. Everyone thinks I'm worthless to that one person that one time thought was worthless. Background is
493
01:28:22.220 --> 01:28:25.560
John Padden: when you're going. There's no black and white when it comes to
494
01:28:25.600 --> 01:28:47.899
John Padden: heroes versus villains and D and D. You don't know why someone built down the village. You don't know why that person called you worthless, exactly evaluated assessment of your character, or was it just an off the cuff statement that you've unfortunately taken to heart. Yeah, yeah, what's strange is? And again, you'd have to kind of go through this as a as a conversation with the person, but they then extrapolate that to
495
01:28:48.210 --> 01:28:59.929
Dr Dean Marshall: in extreme cases, everyone thinks I'm worthless. Which is assuming knowledge on the basis of well, literally, everyone, however, when you question them about. Well, you know.
496
01:29:00.330 --> 01:29:09.049
Dr Dean Marshall: do you know why that person thought you were worth this? They might give you a behaviorism kind of answer like, Oh, I didn't take a bin out, or I didn't do whatever, and it's like, no.
497
01:29:09.160 --> 01:29:14.779
Dr Dean Marshall: a little bit more like, do you understand what's going on in that person's life, you know. Do you understand their
498
01:29:14.840 --> 01:29:27.180
Dr Dean Marshall: marital situation? Do you understand their money situation behind the scenes? You know, these are common reasons why people are, you know, neurotic, essentially. So you know.
499
01:29:27.330 --> 01:29:31.569
Dr Dean Marshall: when you question when you drill down in it, you really don't actually understand
500
01:29:31.580 --> 01:29:34.700
John Padden: why they made that statement. And it's probably
501
01:29:34.890 --> 01:29:41.849
Dr Dean Marshall: a reflection on them more than a reflection on you. So if you take that to its kind of
502
01:29:41.890 --> 01:29:54.489
Dr Dean Marshall: an extreme example, you don't know why they said it, and you wouldn't slash. Shouldn't know why anyone else would say it. So you can't assume that knowledge, you know, even if somebody would call you worthless. You don't know why.
503
01:29:54.620 --> 01:30:02.010
Dr Dean Marshall: But everyone isn't calling you worthless. So you know, there's there's a whole process with with
504
01:30:02.290 --> 01:30:05.780
Dr Dean Marshall: cognitive kind of reframing. and
505
01:30:06.190 --> 01:30:20.169
Dr Dean Marshall: in some situation. So there's a there's a famous picture that gets used in very early reframing work, which is like a picture of the ocean. It's like a little bay in the ocean, a beach, and there's litter in the water.
506
01:30:20.450 --> 01:30:23.680
Dr Dean Marshall: You ask people there on their perception of that.
507
01:30:23.750 --> 01:30:25.510
Dr Dean Marshall: you know. Picture.
508
01:30:25.530 --> 01:30:37.549
Dr Dean Marshall: and it's very natural to say like, Oh, it's quite disgusting, you know, the amount of litter on that beach is is horrible. It makes me feel really sad things like that, because it is. It's a lot of litter in the water.
509
01:30:38.600 --> 01:30:50.410
Dr Dean Marshall: And then you ask them to go through a structured kind of reappraisal of the photo like, well, can you evaluate the positives versus negatives of this photo? Yeah, there's litter.
510
01:30:50.460 --> 01:30:55.599
Dr Dean Marshall: But the sand looks really nice, you know, like the sand. It's a sunny day.
511
01:30:55.800 --> 01:30:59.220
Dr Dean Marshall: And if you know, and actually the ocean.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you can see that litters in one place, probably based on the tide. And so most of the ocean doesn't have litter in air over there, you know, and you get them to kind of go about this process. I said. Like, although you do have initial negative thoughts about things.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you can pause.
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Dr Dean Marshall: rephrase. isolate the negatives, and look for separate positives
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Dr Dean Marshall: and then use them as a kind of like, you know, reversal essentially, and reappraise the situation. So you could do that in the Dnd scenario you could have the person who is is only focusing on the negative of a situation like Oh, no! The dragon attacked
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Dr Dean Marshall: but my family's alive, you know, and you know although the tavern burnt down. I've still got this seller, which is where all this, like gold is, and things like that, like, you know, is correct me, if I'm wrong. Is there not an evolutionary trait to that idea of of focusing on negative? Because I read
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John Padden: as a sports coach, he was trying to get his athletes to not focus on their negative.
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John Padden: muscular fatigue, tiredness, how they performed in a group and look at the positives that they achieved like yes, you didn't confess in that competition. But you hit this Pb. And you were able to achieve this that you have done before, he was saying. It's like it comes from an evolutionary basis of survival and face. One was cavemen. It was more important to know that those berries killed someone from our tribe when they hit them rather than how beautiful that butterfly was over there. Yeah, well.
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Dr Dean Marshall: yeah. So if you think about, there's a number of
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Dr Dean Marshall: things that kind of converge there in in evolutionary psychology. And and and indeed, yeah, you know
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Dr Dean Marshall: evolution by natural selection. So it's it's it kind of converges with the reason why we're superstitious as well. So the reason why we see
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Dr Dean Marshall: a face in a in a in tree bark or something is because we're kind of don't want to use the word designed for it. I'll use the word evolve we've evolved to, you know. See? More than is there. We've evolved to like recognise agency when there is none
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Dr Dean Marshall: because it's riskier to do it, the other to do it.
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Dr Dean Marshall: The other way around, where we'd kind of like don't pay attention to things and be quite naive. So yeah, my example that I always provide the berries is a good one. But my example that I provide in classrooms is the rustle in a bush next to you.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's most probably the wind, you know. If you look outside at any point, there's a natural sway to plants according to the wind. Most of the time in the world
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Dr Dean Marshall: plants move because of things like natural causes. The wind or whatever. However.
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Dr Dean Marshall: on the one out of 10 times that it might be an animal. specifically a predator, or something which could hurt you.
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Dr Dean Marshall: If you don't give it kind of your attention or agency, when there is none, or something like that in the
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Dr Dean Marshall: 10 out of 10 times or 9 out of 10 times, that it's not well that one out of the 10 time you get it wrong, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: something attacks you. Something hurts you. A snake bites you, you name it you're less likely to pass your genes onto the next generation. So it actually pays, evolutionarily speaking, actually pays for us to be paranoid.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It pays for us to, you know, think that there is extra things going on when they're on at the same time. Yeah, yeah, well, it, you know, it's over. Thinking essentially, is what it is, you know.
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01:34:50.400 --> 01:34:52.550
Dr Dean Marshall: if we were completely naive
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01:34:52.620 --> 01:34:56.739
Dr Dean Marshall: about the situation, I'm sure you wouldn't have so much complex
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01:34:57.120 --> 01:35:07.049
Dr Dean Marshall: mental health. You know, issues and things like that. But we wouldn't be as intelligent as we are, or, you know, useful, and things like that. So
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01:35:07.300 --> 01:35:08.890
Dr Dean Marshall: swings of roundabouts, you know
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John Padden: it is. It is, it is yeah.
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Dr Dean Marshall: right. I'm rapidly running out of time. By the way, so I'd like to. I'd like to continue this conversation and and speak to. You know more about the psychological side of things, as I'm sure you would. So let's get another one in the diary, if you don't mind. I mean, this is this is why I mentioned to you before, like the psychology of gaming like I just
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01:35:29.490 --> 01:35:33.810
John Padden: there's something there. and it's a discovery of of both of us, because we can then
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John Padden: from now till the next time we decide to have another talks I'm going to be going away. Do some reading. I'm gonna be finding some more sources that you'd be interested in probably do the same. I will say that I will send that video to you off that speak because they were really fascinating. But also, if you give me 2 s.
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John Padden: can you see that
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John Padden: the art of dramatic writing cool? That was, that was a book that they suggested. So I immediately got it and cause it's all about
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John Padden: the idea of writing characters and their motives and things like that, but it also has a lot of
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I would just, you know I love getting my books and reading them
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Dr Dean Marshall: cool, cool. Thanks so much for your time.
Don't worry about it. I'll stop the recording.
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