10 business lessons I learned from D&D

[Hal]

Stumbled across this little blog post:

http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/3156

I'm not a business person, but I certainly see the truth in a lot of these anecdotes. Still, I'd like to think we can do better.

What "real world" lessons have RPGs taught you?

(And if this is the wrong forum for this, feel free to relocate it)

[Tengu_temp]

This list is mostly good, but the examples for point #2 make me cringe.

[Totally Guy]

Here's a situation.

We'd arrived with our boats at a castle on a small island and we had some sailors and mercenaries on our side. We could have probably taken the castle by force but we'd probably lose our mercenaries and sailors which wouldn't really have been so bad. So we tried to use an intimidate check to scare the other side into surrendering. It didn't work until we got creative.

We burnt our own boats. Our army was now stuck on the island with the enemy's castle. If they didn't surrender now the inevitable fight would be their death. The big change was that we couldn't just go home like they wanted us to.

So I learned that sometimes ridding yourself of an option can be advantageous to getting people to do what you want.

The other solution we were considering was to have the party shout some very loud orders "Attack at dawn!" then we could withdraw leaving the army with no one to call off the attack. The same thing would be achieved... with less boat burning but in D&D individuals of high level are disproportionately awesome plus it's not fun for the PCs to go away.

Say I'm hiring someone but the candidate I want is looking for a better job. I could set a deadline for their acceptance of my job offer myself but they might believe that the deadline is flexible. If I tell this person that I'm on holiday and my secetary will be hiring someone else on the next day if the position isn't filled then the threat I'm making carries more weight.

[Indon]

Number two reads more like, "Exploit the letter of the law to break its' spirit", which is most definitely an essential lesson in business.

I think a mention of Vecna's Head would have served as a good business lesson, too: Don't lose your head just because you heard you can get something out of it.