Warhammer Fantasy Career Planning
Alone, Map-less, in a Strange Land…
The problem of planning your career in Software Development is a common one. Almost no-one I meet seems to know where they’re going, or even really where they want to get. Is this a factor of how fast things move in our world? Perhaps; but it also seems to be generally endemic that we as a group (developers, platform engineers, etc.) are largely short-term-focussed and rarely in possession of a grand career-plan.
(I’m pretty certain this problem also exists for other folks in the vast world of I.T., but I’ve not as much experience of those areas, so I’ve focussed this on the bit I do know.)
Is this because we’re lacking in imagination? Quite the contrary; many roles in our world have creativity and innovation at the heart of them. Not only that, but there is the legendary nerd-overlap between our world and those of comix, online gaming, sci-fi / fantasy, and “tabletop roleplaying games” (as I believe the kids are calling them these days).
In this post I’m going to try an experiment, and think out loud about what might happen if we gathered up a fruitful harvest from the last (and to me most familiar) of these worlds — Fantasy Roleplaying — and bring it to ours.
Would it be possible to have a career plan (and to even change it regularly), and as a consequence get places you never would have thought possible at the start?
The point of such a plan would be to allow you to focus on the short- (and very-short-)term, making decisions about skills to learn, experiences that will be valuable, and roles to pick that will move you closer to where you want to be. It might even help you in the not-so-great times, when things might not be what you had hoped, helping you to make the best out of almost any bad situation.
Why “Warhammer”? And Why “Fantasy”?!?!
This all sounds great (especially as I get a free trip down memory lane, with the added bonus of an excuse to post some awesome 80’s British fantasy art) but where should I start? I’m going to propose that the system of building up your player-character (or “PC”) in a Role-Playing game is incredibly useful for continuous career planning. I’ll explain what I mean.
In the rule systems for the games that I used to play in the 80s (such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (aka “WFRP”) and Middle Earth Roleplaying (aka “MERP”)) Your PCs was defined largely by the following information:
- A selection of innate “Characteristics” (aka “stats” or your “profile”) which described a PCs general aptitudes in a wide range of areas — e.g. movement (M), strength (S), cool (Cl), toughness (T), fellowship (Fel), leadership (Ld) etc. — and which were used to determine outcomes for PCs in various situations and encounters where no specific skill was directly applicable. (Check out the full WFRP list for those with an interest.)
- A set of “Skills” — typically ones which could be learned from scratch(and therefore improved) — and which allowed a PC to directly impact the direction of any situation. Example skills are “Acrobatics”, “Acting”, “Air Lore”. (Again, here’s the full WFRP list.)
- A “Career”, which indicated both a PC’s past life (informing their pre-existing skills) and also offered a list of subsequent progressions — e.g. Footpad to Highwayman to Mercenary Chief— from which further experiences would arise (and be reflected in the form of experience points or “XP”) which could then be used to improve stats and learn new skills. (And again, the full WFRP list.)
“Characteristics”? “Skills”? “Career”? That’s Great, But why the “Fantasy Roleplaying”?
At the start of any campaign (or “Quest” — we’ll use that for now on as it makes more sense to the global readership) everyone would create their PC with a massive dollop of chance — dice were rolled, coins tossed, etc. — and in some cases all you got 100% control over was your name. But once you had your fixed starting position, you did have control — complete control. You would usually have gold (and if not you could go and earn some), and you would engage in adventures in the course of which you would gather experience points. Both these would be “spent” by you on your PC in order to progress them, and this progression would usually be in one of the three areas mentioned above. (In my experience anyway, as we shied away from (A)D&D-style, possession-based, “my D10-damage Vorpal Blade destroys all life within a seven-mile radius” style adventuring. That was for the Yanks — sorry folks.)
So how would you progress? (Character-development being the main aim of all players after the thrill of adventuring itself.) Well, this was up to you the player, but almost every game system I came across (apart from the awesome Call of Cthulhu and bonkers Paranoia) gave you a great deal of control. Some folks would focus maniacally on one career (typically these would be those who focussed on magic — or “Enterprise Architecture” as we now term it), progressing from level to level, learning more and more specific and arcane skills, developing higher and higher stats in a few focussed characteristics, always in the same career-area, specialising all the time. Others would take a very different tack, jumping from career to career again and again, spending their loot and XPs in learning as many and as diverse an array of skills as possible, knowing that in it’s own way, breadth was as good as depth.
So what the heck does this have to do with career planning in Software Development? Well, aside from the significant nerd-overlap, the general themes, elements, and approach of what I’ve just explained also serves pretty well as a model for us and our progression IRL.
Let’s break it down:
“Characteristics” == Your More Innate Abilities
These “stats” are not your skills, they come next; these are the more innate abilities, the ones you were dealt long ago, at school and probably even earlier. To be able to pick the rest of your path you need to be aware of what these are for you; your strengths and weaknesses; and be cognisant of them when you build everything on top of this, and also where you want to develop.
“Current Skills” == Things You’ve Learned
These are the things you can make a conscious effort to learn — some are many-levelled, some have pre-requisites, some need a great deal of hands-on practice and some you can just gain by reading books. They also commonly form the basis for the Career-position which you currently hold, and are most usually pre-requisites for moving into a different one.
“Current Career” == The Thing You’re Known For Right Now
WARNING: Slight terminology-clash on this one.
This is at a lower level than your overall life-long career in Dev. This is rather the thing you are primarily known for, right now, and the current basis for your continued experiences and skills development.
Great, So What’s Next?
All this is very well, but I’ve just described a mechanism to examine where you are now, but this post has promised to help you figure out where to go from here. Well, I’m glad you’ve stuck with me this far, because that’s coming next.
The key thing about “Fantasy” Roleplaying was that it was fantastic. You were only constrained by your imagination, a few dice rolls, and the rule book. As a consequence, myself and the folks I played with never had any difficulty having an idea of where we wanted to take our PCs in the future. We had explicit statements of where we were right now, as individuals and consequently as a group, recorded in black and white on the character sheets in front of us. We also had a catalogue of where we could go in the form of the rule book. It listed every skill you could ever want, and how to gain it. (And if something was missing, the Games Master — aka Dungeon Master for our US cousins — was empowered to make stuff up.) It also listed all the careers that could be followed, the ways to jump between them, the costs of doing so, and the skills you would need to get there and then thrive.
If we think about it, is that really missing in what we do now? I would argue not. The various career paths you can follow are there to be uncovered, if you look for them, and the internet contains more than enough information on what the steps are to get where you want to go, what skills to learn, how high the bar is set, and much, much more. Perhaps there is too much information, and too many paths. I’ll admit that (and it’s something I and colleagues have been working on in two other side projects) but in the meantime it doesn’t mean this is impossible, we just have to do a bit of work to find out the equivalent of the required Attributes, Skills, Experiences and Career Paths for ourselves.
Warhammer Fantasy Career Planning
Rolling Your Character
I’m assuming you’re going to start with the equivalent of rolling your character. Using the tips above, you can figure out where you are right now. Think about (and write down) your current characteristics, current skills, and current career.
Career should be the easiest — that’s your current job title.
For the Skills you could take a look at the Quest I and some co-workers are currently working on for an “Apprentice Java Distributed Systems Engineer”. This has a stab at the Skills we think you currently need to have fulfil such a role. They are typically very specific, and very technical (though as you progress they can also encompass “softer” aspects.)
(NOTE: most Skills have levels too. This is because, for example, the UNIX CLI Skill you need as an apprentice is likely very different from that which you’ll need as a Master SRE. We’re not really concerning ourselves with that for now. We could get lost in a world of detail.)
Finally there are the Characteristics. This is the hardest bit, but again my co-workers and I (this time inspired by Camille Fournier and the folks at Rent the Runway) made a Grade Ladder which lists various expectations we have for engineers at various levels of seniority, and these are mapped to WFRP characteristics for clarity (e.g. “T” for Toughness, “Fel” for Fellowship, etc.)
Picking Your Quest Goal
Now you have your personal here and now, it’s time to pick a target job — or even better identify a role model who does that job. What or who might this be? — typically the answer to this questions lies in being aware of what you like to do, what excites you, and what makes you feel challenged. Once you know these things, you can cast around (on the internet, within your company, amongst your friends and acquaintances) for people who are doing what you want to do. They are your career role models.
Once you have the job/role-model picked out, analyse what you think the valued Characteristics and Skills for it/them are. If you’ve picked a role model you can also search for anything they’ve written or spoken about the Experiences they went through , and the key milestones on their Quest.
There is a key part to the thought-experiment here. You need to do this picking and analysis/investigation with the mindset of someone playing a character; rather than as you yourself. Why? Because like I argued at the start, we seem to have no problems picking these crazy goals for ourselves when we’re playing a game (break into the Lonely Mountain, outsmart Smaug, and steal the Arkenstone? Easy for a lowly burglar with zero experience!) but when we’re thinking about ourselves it all gets a little too impossible. If you free your thinking for just a wee while and allow your usually-more-logical thoughts to roam as you would were you playing a character you’ll be amazed what you can come up with.
Planning Your Quest
But the freeing-your-mind aspect is not the only benefit of this Role-Playing approach. You can also use it practically to help yourself plan and go Questing.
Now you have these elements — at least the right-now and the quest goal, but perhaps also a bunch of detail on the path and valuable experiences if you’ve found a particularly open role model — you now have a stack more clarity. But this won’t get you there without some more effort. Admittedly things are a little easier in actual Role Playing because the rules for PC progression are written out in black and white in the rule book. But here IRL there’s the bonus excitement that you’re writing your own rules, and you’re not alone. Remember, there is a lot of stuff to help you out there on the interwebs.
To plan out your Quest work backwards from the ultimate goal, with the aim of linking back up to where you are now. It’s a journey remember. You need to get you there, not anyone else.
Think of the four elements: Characteristics you need to develop; the Skills you must gain, deepen or hone; key Experiences to help with both of these; and finally intermediate Careers you might need to pursue which give a framework to these other three elements or serve as your entry into the more experienced levels.
Sometimes this planning is easy; the path might in fact a well-trodden one, and the support already there. Other times, it’s harder, because you are aiming at something more valuable or harder to achieve. In these circumstances you’ll need to do more research, and even perhaps some exploring to fill in gaps where there is no clear path through. (Think Mirkwood for a good example.) Either way, don’t spend forever planning, you’ll want to get going on with the Questing at some point soon.
Questing
It’s important to point out that the business of Questing is as non-linear in real live as it frequently is in RPGs. Sometimes as I said, things are easy because you’re following a well-trodden path, and not setting your goals too high. That’s fine, it’s good sometimes to keep things achievable and predictable. It’s nicest if you’ve engaged on such a quest on purpose.
Other times you choose to stretch yourself. In these circumstances you’ll frequently end up pursuing false leads, go on fruitless sub-Quests, go round in circles, and even completely fail and have to start again. This can be frustrating, but it can also in itself be a lot of fun. (One way I’ve supported myself on such harder quests is to think of those who might follow me, and just like a climber setting a new route up a cliff-face, I try and leave signs and other aids behind me to assist those who follow.)
But the key thing to focus on when Questing — be it the simple stuff, or the complete opposite — is the next few steps. That’s the whole point of all this. Because you have the rest of the quest mapped out, you know (or at least are as certain as you can be) these are going to get you towards your goal. Why is this important? Because we as Developers seem to be almost universally struck by the same curse — that of the new and shiny, next-big thing. We find it very easy to get distracted, and dabble in many things, but not enough to make progress in any of them. In short, we’re great at wasting our time. (Years of it sometimes.)
Another technique to use in conjunction with this next-step-only approach is to periodically re-evaluate your overall Quest-map occasionally. We are lucky that the field in which we work changes frequently, but we also need to keep an eye on things. If Saruman starts breeding Uruk Hai in Rohan, then perhaps it’s a good plan to spend some of your efforts keeping track of this rather then going hell for leather for Minas Tirith. Just sayin’.
Always Be Questing
I used to hate it when, upon reaching the end of a massive campaign, had to retire my super-developed PC, and roll a new one. (If you’ve never played it, the WFRP Enemy Within Campaign was for me the best ever. Check it out if you’ve never played it. You won’t be disappointed.) IRL however you never have to do this. You are the PC. You might succeed in your Quest, achieving all you set out to. But instead of stopping, you can set a new goal and push even further, or seek out something completely different, and head your career off in another direction.
It is also worth nothing that, just as in Role-Playing, it is these never-ending-Quests where the real achievement, and satisfaction lies. Treat yourself, pick a semi-ludicrous goal. You will find that the skills you gained in one sphere are unexpectedly applicable in another. You might not even end up where you intended, but you will definitely have some excellent adventures, and you’ll be far better off than if you just stayed at home, safe in your Hobbit hole.
