Honoring Heroes and Building Communities through Gaming

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Welcome to Transacting Value, where we talk about practical applications for personal values when dealing with each other and even within ourselves.

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Where we foster a podcast listening experience that lets you hear the power of a value system for managing burnout, establishing boundaries and finding belonging.

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My name is Josh Porthouse, I'm your host and we are your people.

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This is why values still hold value.

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This is Transacting Value.

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But my experience of playing this game is it's not the elves and the magic and the dragons that's really interesting.

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It's the choices that you make.

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Today on Transacting Value.

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What is our role within a role-playing game?

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What is our character within the character arc of a board game?

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How do we know which roles, which boundaries, which values, which assets, which opportunities to exploit tactically, strategically or ethically when we're playing games?

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And, more importantly, what does that degree of inquiry and critical thought have to do with our own human progress in reality and our own character development?

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This conversation we're talking with Paraic Mulgrew from San Antonio, and he's the co-owner of Night W Nightwatch Games.

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We're going to talk all about it his journey, his character development, his time in the Army and what that looks like for his gaming store and his national reach across his podcast and his YouTube channel.

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Guys, without further ado, I'm Porter, I'm your host.

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This is Transacting Value.

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Paraic, how you doing?

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I'm doing great.

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How are you, Josh?

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Good, good.

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I appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule, man, as a business owner, especially around dinner time at the time of this recording, I can only assume you've got so much free time, so I appreciate you spending some of it with us.

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It's going to be a good time.

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I can tell yeah, I'm excited for it as well.

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Now, before we get too far into this, there's a couple things I think that are important to unpack in any, you know, new relationship.

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So, at the time of this recording, for anybody who's new to the show, this is an audio only podcast, and so Paraic for anybody who has no idea who you are or anything about Night W Nightwatch Games, let's just start at the beginning here.

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Take a couple minutes.

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Man, who are you?

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Where are you from?

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What sort of things have shaped your perspective on life?

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Yeah, my name is Paraic Mulgrew, living out of San Antonio.

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My wife, Brenda, and I started a store it's a tabletop gaming cafe, it's called Night W Nightwatch Games, and that was what we did after I got out of the army.

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I served in the army for about 10 years, and when we got out there was the big question of what to do with our life at that point, and it was my wife's idea actually to open up the game store that she and I constantly talked about over coffee while we were traveling the world, and we always walked out a little disappointed because there was a lot of potential that didn't seem to be achieved, and so our vision of what a good game store meant was pretty vivid, and so we opened up the game store.

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I think it's now close to 10 years now and, uh, we're doing really well, congratulations and we actually opened up a sister game store, which is not really a game store.

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It's called a medieval boutique, it's called The Sanctuary and it's physically right next door and that caters to the medieval renaissance fairgoer.

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So we have weapons and armor and and corsets and dresses and the whole thing that you would wear to a Renaissance fair.

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So you you've created it sounds like you've created an atmosphere where people can adopt these, you know, mental, emotional, spiritual type roles and become somebody else, physically staying the same or physically changing.

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Yeah, the initial vision was people come to Night W Nightwatch Games to play role-playing games like Dungeons and D ragons, and my vision was that they would actually dress up while sitting around the table to help some of the immersiveness of the game, and my part was to give them a setting in which put them in that mode.

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So Night W Nightwatch Games is very immersive.

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It looks like the interior of a medieval keep or a tavern and all the rooms are themed and you have chandeliers and wooden floors and suits of armor and it just looks like a medieval hangout and the idea was that people might dress up while playing these games.

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That's not quite how it has panned out, but that was the initial vision.

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Has it detracted at all?

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No, it's.

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We find that the demographic that are into immersive role playing have their own outlet, known as a live-action role-playing event, known as LARPing, and they tend to do that outdoors because part of the LARPing experience is swinging a weapon and bashing on each other and having some type of combat simulated, whereas obviously we cannot do that indoors.

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So my setting is more of a tavern setting, where you're sitting around a long banquet table eating a turkey leg, drinking out of a goblet and playing a role-playing game.

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That's cool.

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Is that an expression?

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Or you actually have turkey legs on the menu and goblets of mead, or what?

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Not the turkey leg, literally?

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But we do have paninis and baked potatoes and all sorts of hors d'oeuvres, charcuterie boards.

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So it's one step shy of the turkey leg experience Nice.

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What got you into this to begin with?

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Are you naturally or normally, you know, a D&D guy?

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Or did you play a lot of board games game nights in the army?

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Like what was the impetus?

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It was actually something that I grew up with.

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My dad was military as well.

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I had an older brother and we grew up around the age when Dungeons and Dragons was first introduced as a concept and I was taught how to play from my brother, and we survived the satanic panic of the reaction to this immersive role-playing fantasy setting and we had to really justify why it is that we enjoy it, why do we do it, and so a lot of understanding was developed about what this activity does, or what it can do, and to be able to justify it in the face of that kind of religious conflict that was generated about what's the value of pretending to be something that you're not and to use your imagination and participate in activities that are, you know, somewhat questionable Casting spells and and shooing down people with your weapons and in conquering kingdoms.

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Some of that's got some real world applications and so, understandably, people were were pretty nervous about this new activity.

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Understandably, people were pretty nervous about this new activity, but that was 50 years ago, I think.

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Well, it's at least 40 years ago that Dungeons Dragons came out.

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So we're well past that kind of misunderstanding and we're now at that point where people are playing this game across the board.

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The demographic that participates in role-playing games is not what you would think from 30 years ago.

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It's modern people, well-educated people, white-collar type people, and they tend to be older, over 30 years old, and they have a lot of life experience that they bring to the table and they sort of want to recapture that imagination that we had as kids.

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Why?

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What's the appeal Like?

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Do you think that either recapturing the extent of that imagination helps alleviate just the daily grind that everybody gets used to in their adult routines, or do you see it more of an ability to contribute more of a mature aspect to this character development and character arc and gameplay?

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What's the draw?

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The backbone of my kind of controversial view is that most people play role-playing games as a very simple, superficial, stress-relieving social bonding moment with other people, and they have fun silly times around the tabletop and they're laughing and they're having a good time and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

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And yet at Night W Nightwatch Games we sell lots of different types of games, not just the role playing games.

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We have board games, dice games, card games, war games, skirmish games, all sorts of things that you could do with your time and all sorts of things that you could do with your time and all sorts of things that you could use to bond with other people.

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And we find that people, when they use role-playing games, they tend to just scratch the surface of what they could be doing with that role-playing game.

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And it's my view that role-playing games offer a profound potential of not just bonding with your fellow gamers and having a good time at the table, but it's a great matrix in which to exercise identity, exercise choices that you make, suffer the consequences of those choices that you make, suffer the consequences of those choices and in one sort of package deal, you get to adopt a value system that may be yours or maybe not.

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But you get to put yourself in a fantastic situation and see what happens when you adopt that value system.

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And it's a safe space because it's all imagination.

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Nobody's actually really getting any kind of consequence that would be harmful but it lets you work through some dynamics of why is it good to be good or what is the consequence of not being good?

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And then you get to super coat all that with this kind of fantastic setting of elves and dwarves and dragons and magic and all that other stuff.

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But my experience of playing this game is it's not the elves and the magic and the dragons.

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That's really interesting.

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It's the choices that you make and it's not just the tactical choices.

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There's a lot of board games that let you make tactical choices.

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It's the moral choices, it's not.

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Can I kill the dragon?

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The question is, should I kill the dragon?

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And unfortunately, I really think that a lot of people play role-playing games and they don't tap into the real potential of what that game could do For anybody new to the show.

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The majority of my career at this point over the last 14 years has been with the Marine Corps infantry active up until recently.

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And one of the things that we do actually, I think, very well in the Marine Corps is dehumanize people, and it serves a point as a warfighting function.

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When you're talking about training some degree of cognitive dissonance, because what you want to alleviate is hesitation in a kinetic war zone, now ideally what you want to steer that towards is some sort of productive decision making, but at the very least minimize the hesitation.

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And that counterpoint is met with what we call either tactical decision games or ethical decision games.

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Now, both of those things coined through those terms at least, are relatively recent in the last 20 to 30 years, at least are relatively recent in the last 20 to 30 years.

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But in concept the last 250 the Marine Corps has been around.

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It's been a training tool and I mean you could look back to Roman centurions and samurai, you can look at Zulu warriors, you can look at Spartans and any other warrior culture similar to the Marine Corps and to, I think, a little bit more biased but a lesser degree, the US Department of Defense as a whole.

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You take in those aspects of training where it's not all physical.

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Some of it has to be mental and spiritual and emotional to understand the context in which you're being physical.

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So, for example, the ethical decision games that you just described do you slay the dragon?

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Did you ever in?

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Uh, did you ever see Merlin?

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That series that was on Netflix?

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Yeah, I thought it was great and I I thought the character development, uh, of Merlin and Arthur and the relationship just as a show.

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If you haven't seen it, anybody else listening to this I highly recommend it.

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It was very good.

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But this similar point can I trust the dragon?

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Do I release the dragon?

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Do I kill the dragon?

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And in this particular, can I trust the dragon?

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Do I release the dragon?

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Do I kill the dragon?

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And in this particular instance, is releasing the dragon going to give me a tactical advantage or not?

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In a kinetic environment?

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And it became the second and third order decision making process and I don't think that depth of inquiry and criticality exists in many places in society today.

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Alrighty, folks sit tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value.

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Is releasing the dragon going to give me a tactical advantage or not in a kinetic environment, and it became the second and third order decision-making process, and I don't think that depth of inquiry and criticality exists in many places in society today.

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Agreed, agreed.

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Even when they have the ability to get into that kind of critical practice, they tend to eschew it because practicing values is taxing, it requires work.

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I think you know the good road is usually the harder road and when people want to play games, choosing that hard road is probably not on their first choice.

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I do have an interesting story that parallels what you just said.

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I was 11 Bravo in the army for a while and there was a very amazing parallel between my Iraq experience when I was leading a patrol through a town versus the adventuring party going through a town.

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And if I could quickly sum up, that scene was I was going through the town, a local hopped out of a window, a couple of blocks down and took a pot shot at our group and hit one of my squad mates.

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Luckily it was right on the chest plate so it wasn't lethal or anything.

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But I was the leader of the squad at the moment, so I had to go into rapid decision-making of what is my priority, what do I do?

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And I remember there was almost an alter ego of me watching this scene as if I was an adventuring party and I got my stick of death in my hand and I've got my magical armor on and I've got my communication system that lets me talk to people miles away.

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And I remember thinking it's not about chasing down the guy that just shot at us, it's making sure that my team is okay.

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And then there was a whole list of priorities below that of like, what would what would command want me to do?

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What am I trained to do?

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What is my capabilities of doing?

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And then, overarching all of that, was this voice that saying what should I be doing?

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What is the moral thing for me to do right now?

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And then the story goes on where I take the squad up to the building where this shooter came out of and we bust in and there's a family there.

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It's a full family males, females, young, old.

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And, sure enough, in the corner is a rifle.

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And you know, you know, if we were playing Dungeons and Dragons, many, many players would say, oh, we just kill them all, we just slaughter them.

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And I remember thinking that's not even a remote option.

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I can't do that.

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Physically I could do that, you know, we had grenades and guns and we could have done that, but there was no reality where that would have ended up being good, you know it would have turned the town against us.

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Where that would have ended up being good?

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You know it would have turned the town against us.

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I would have to answer to my command back when I got to base.

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I would have to answer to myself.

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There was a lot of consequences that come into just ripping apart the enemy in that kind of scenario.

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And yet when players play Dungeons and Dragons they don't think twice about going into the lair of the orcs and slaughtering all the orcs.

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They don't think twice about it.

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And I remember thinking there's a strange disconnect there.

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And it's not that.

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Can you kill the orcs?

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It's.

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Should you kill the orcs?

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And if you do, what are the consequences?

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No-transcript, by participating in a value system that may be yours or it may not be yours, but you can really sort of get to a deeper empathy of what it is to be good or what it is to be bad.

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Yeah, those life.

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Well, let's say real life, practical application parallels obviously aren't common, right, there's, let's say, statistically, 1% of the US population that may experience that, and even a smaller percentage I guess that actually will, you know, go to combat or deploy or whatever.

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But that's just the military.

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You look at law enforcement, this thin blue line movement over the last couple of years, maybe a decade or something, I'm not sure how long it's been around, but this relative movement against law enforcement and what that's like for them on a daily basis might very well be similar to your patrol, just in a domestic environment as opposed to foreign, not in a house, and so you know.

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You look at EMTs, obviously every day, life-saving decisions.

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You know, should I do this, should I not?

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I'm not going to know if this works until I see that it doesn't or that it does.

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How is this going to affect this person?

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Are they allergic?

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We don't know, because they're unconscious.

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Any other number of decisions in a split second, this rapid decision making you talked about, where, in my experience, we attribute it to this 1950s fighter pilot, Colonel John Boyd, and it became coined, I guess, as his concept, and we call it an OODA loop, and it's observe, orient, decide and act.

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But it's this four part process that allows you to make decisions, ideally, more rapidly.

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But I'll tell you, Paraic it's only going to happen if you're exposed to the chance to develop that rapidity.

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Yeah, no-transcript.

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So in your experience, as you're working with all of these people that come into your shop or just yours firsthand even, how did you develop that degree of insight and rapidity and growth and awareness?

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What did you do?

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The game master, or even as a player, is to really try to use your imagination and not only mentally project yourself into the scene, but able to articulate and act in such a way that it heightens the immersion of the other players, and that whole activity is based in really strong empathy.

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You have to empathize with the people that are at the table, but you also have to project this empathy into this fantastic setting and these fantastic people that don't really exist, but they are supposed to be an amalgamation of humanity in different facets, and so you have to really empathize with where they're coming from, what do they want, what do they fear and what is the obstacle to their desire.

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And you have to interact with them on that level to heighten the immersion of the game.

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And to do that I had to tap into my real world experiences I'm over 50 now, so there's a handful of them and I found that the game that I saw many people playing and sometimes the game around my own table was it just wasn't based in a real human understanding.

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It was just craziness.

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It was like people surfing on the back of dragons and throwing lightning bolts and blowing up castles and not even blinking.

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It was just crazy mayhem for the sake of mayhem, and I remember thinking that's not even close to anything real, and if you're going to take reality out of the game, I can't empathize with any of this.

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There's no connection to me and my humanity and this game.

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No connection to me and my humanity and this game.

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It's just crazy chaos, and that's not really what I was looking for in a game.

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I was looking for something that had a little more meaning, so that at the end of the game I felt like I did something, and I think that might be the difference is, some people come to a role playing game and they're just looking for a disassociated escapism, and the more crazy it is the better, whereas I was coming to the table with.

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I want to explore humanity as it's portrayed in these different types of facets of a fantasy world, so that I can come to understand myself better, but also come to understand other people better, and so I think my approach is just a lot different than most people's, but in pursuing my approach I found there's a huge potential to this.

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It is really, really a strong, strong thing.

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I mean it gets close to almost therapeutic kind of counseling in some regards, but it's very much the same thing that you said that if you repeatedly practice making decisions, you get better at it.

00:23:29.218 --> 00:23:41.737
So if you're in a game and you practice making good decisions and being a good person in the face of all sorts of adversity, you're going to be better at being a good person in real life.

00:23:42.577 --> 00:23:47.989
Yeah, and the point you just made essentially about well disassociated escapism.

00:23:47.989 --> 00:23:52.711
I don't think that applies to a lot of digitized video games necessarily.

00:23:52.711 --> 00:23:54.758
There's a lot of quest games you can play.

00:23:54.758 --> 00:24:01.502
There's a lot of other you know, similarly structured, puzzle type oriented things that can help you think right.

00:24:01.502 --> 00:24:03.915
And obviously there's schools and curricula and things.

00:24:03.915 --> 00:24:06.482
But there is, there has been a difference.

00:24:06.482 --> 00:24:25.321
When I was in, well, when I was in elementary school, you know, we had let me let me couch this point by saying I don't pay attention to these games now, so I don't know if they exist, but when I was in elementary school we had a lot of these edutainment games and this is when computers were first coming out.

00:24:25.321 --> 00:24:31.506
We had a computer lab and we thought it was the coolest thing and we had a Sister Virginia.

00:24:31.506 --> 00:24:32.868
I was at Catholic school.

00:24:32.868 --> 00:24:38.696
Sister Virginia was our computer teacher, and so obviously, she was fluent and proficient in computers.

00:24:38.696 --> 00:24:40.141
Right, so and so.

00:24:40.141 --> 00:24:46.886
What we ended up doing, though, was playing games like the original Oregon Trail yeah, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

00:24:46.886 --> 00:25:19.384
And I think eventually, that maybe morphed somehow some way into ABC Mouse and some other platforms that, over time, Sony and Microsoft adopted in some of their gameplay as well, but now, now, I think there's a greater preponderance of digitized games where it is disassociative, not restorative and not insightful and not as critical, and I think that's where we're going to run into some issues, because there's this distinct difference.

00:25:19.384 --> 00:25:21.229
Uh, what's, what's on it?

00:25:21.275 --> 00:25:56.682
Well, college campuses are all over the news now, so let's just say higher education in the United States as a setting for this, where, I think, relative degrees of investors and lobbyists control what gets taught in the curriculum, and then, eventually, somebody else with similar clout and credibility validates that and says no, it's accredited, we can teach that, and people are like oh well, it's accredited, I'm going to have my kids learn that and it's a good school, it's private, there's investors, there's whatever, and, as we're seeing, that's going to cause an impact and an influence in what's taught and how it's taught and how the campus eventually develops over time.

00:25:57.375 --> 00:26:16.310
Saying that the general flow in my experience, at least when I got my bachelor's going through school, was there's your gen ed stuff math, science, social sciences and then you can specialize in stuff which may be also oriented to social sciences, or you decide to specialize in humanities.

00:26:16.330 --> 00:26:17.556
But it's an either or it's not an and.

00:26:17.556 --> 00:26:35.894
And I think when it comes to role playing games, let's say tabletop board games in your case, even into a certain degree digitized games as well, you can totally experience and even specialize in experiencing humanities while still showcasing social sciences.

00:26:35.894 --> 00:26:47.815
And I don't see that and overlap really anywhere else, at least not as publicly, you know, in your face and up front, and it's a, it's a huge disservice.

00:26:47.815 --> 00:27:13.378
I think that you have not yet franchised because because your model I agree 100% has so much potential to do more, as a template maybe, or as an actual franchise, I don't know but the exposure that you're building for the community and I don't know but the exposure that you're building for the community and I don't want to generalize it and say humanity, but you know the people that are in the community is huge.

00:27:15.042 --> 00:27:17.508
Alrighty, folks sit tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value.

00:27:19.616 --> 00:27:29.464
Alrighty, folks, if you're looking for more perspective and more podcasts, you can check out Transacting Value on Wreaths Across America Radio, listen in on iHeartRadio Odyssey and TuneIn.

00:27:29.464 --> 00:27:46.846
The exposure that you're building for the community and I don't want to generalize it and say humanity, but the people that are in the community is huge, and I'm curious, though, that's what you've done for everybody else, and so let me dive into you for a second.

00:27:46.846 --> 00:28:00.795
Okay, getting into this mindset, getting into this drive and building this insight and and what caused you to gain some of this interest in the first place, not in gaming, but in people and cultures and social sciences and humanities.

00:28:00.795 --> 00:28:07.368
So this is a segment of the show called developing character developing character and for anybody new or Paraic included concluded, this is a segment of the show called developing character.

00:28:07.368 --> 00:28:11.022
Developing character for and anybody new or concluded, this is two questions you feel free to answer as in-depth or as vulnerable as you want.

00:28:11.022 --> 00:28:11.483
It's up to you.

00:28:11.483 --> 00:28:28.346
But I'm going to dive a little bit into your value systems because, in my opinion, any good game revolves around the characters more than the gameplay, and so the depth of character, I think, is what resonates more with anybody in a podcast conversation listening to it as well.

00:28:28.346 --> 00:28:29.881
So that's what we're going to talk about here.

00:28:29.881 --> 00:28:39.489
Okay, my first question what were some of the values that you were exposed to growing up or that you remember, maybe even adopting through your family at an early

00:28:39.588 --> 00:28:39.709
age?

00:28:41.536 --> 00:28:42.380
That's an easy one.

00:28:42.380 --> 00:28:45.538
I am a chip off the old block.

00:28:45.538 --> 00:29:10.361
I am very much like my father, with a good mix of the softness and poeticness and empathy of my mother, doing the right thing solely because it's the right thing, not because it's the easy thing or it's what people expect of you.

00:29:10.361 --> 00:29:17.922
It's really just being a good person because that's what you think you should be doing and it's a conviction.

00:29:17.922 --> 00:29:37.259
I was raised Catholic as well, so I certainly have my fair share of Catholic guilt dumped on me, but it's the idea that we're here on the world for a purpose, and it's a profound purpose, and it's not just earning money and doing the daily grind and getting through life.

00:29:37.259 --> 00:29:41.929
It's making yourself the best version of you that you can be.

00:29:41.929 --> 00:30:00.358
That you can be, and I was taught early on, mainly from my father, that the hard road is usually the good road, and when you have a choice in life about what to do, the one that's the most difficult is probably the thing that makes you a better person.

00:30:00.358 --> 00:30:13.211
It comes down to that that tropey idea that a sword has to be forged by being heated and banged on and really roughed up to make it strong.

00:30:13.211 --> 00:30:28.316
I think that sort of holds true with humans and that to exercise the soul of humanity you really have to test it with fire and difficult decisions and you have to suffer the consequences of those decisions.

00:30:28.316 --> 00:30:34.368
And I was taught early on that that's really a sole purpose of who we are.

00:30:34.368 --> 00:30:46.646
And to help me practice that, you know I made all my mistakes as a young teenager and a young adult and even as an older adult, still making silly human mistakes.

00:30:46.646 --> 00:31:08.086
But I find that gaming and interacting with other people is a system, a matrix of support, so that, one, you can learn vicariously through other people's mistakes, but two, when you do make that mistake, you have a support structure that's going to walk you through the consequences of that mistake and then encourage you not to make that mistake in the future.

00:31:08.086 --> 00:31:20.464
And so I found being a good person was heavily tied into a social interactive connection with your fellow humans that are walking a similar path.

00:31:21.214 --> 00:31:24.136
And you know, in churches and religions we call that congregation.

00:31:24.136 --> 00:31:25.638
And you know, in churches and religions we call that congregation.

00:31:25.638 --> 00:31:31.782
And while I certainly don't run a church, Night W nightwatch Games ans is definitely congregation.

00:31:31.782 --> 00:31:50.707
It's that kind of like-minded person, sometimes disenfranchised, sometimes alienated from the mainstream, but they're all struggling with the very same questions that most of us are, and that is who am I, where did I come from and where am I going and why does any of this really matter?

00:31:50.707 --> 00:31:56.281
And we find that, through gaming, sports is probably very similar.

00:31:56.281 --> 00:32:04.023
I know the military is very similar but it gives you a framework to work out some of those answers of what is really meaningful.

00:32:04.023 --> 00:32:09.539
Yeah, I owe a lot of that to my father, as I was being disciplined as a young kid.

00:32:09.539 --> 00:32:18.003
That was the takeaway of do the right thing even if it's the hard thing, and that was the first cue.

00:32:18.003 --> 00:32:20.455
If it's the hard thing, it's probably the right thing.

00:32:20.455 --> 00:32:23.219
It's so easy to be a bad guy.

00:32:23.219 --> 00:32:23.940
It's so easy.

00:32:23.940 --> 00:32:25.761
It's so easy to be a bad guy.

00:32:25.761 --> 00:32:26.021
It's so easy.

00:32:26.041 --> 00:32:26.182
Yeah.

00:32:26.182 --> 00:32:31.347
Now to that point, though, I think there's a sort of threshold, a fine line to.

00:32:31.347 --> 00:32:34.892
Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's the way you need to go.

00:32:34.892 --> 00:32:50.590
There may be simpler options, but I think oftentimes we confuse hard and difficult with complex, as opposed to easy and simple well, it comes back to something.

00:32:50.631 --> 00:33:02.226
What you said earlier is if you practice being good, it gets easier being good because it becomes you, it becomes your habit, becomes your pattern of thought and it becomes your value system.

00:33:02.226 --> 00:33:07.175
And if you are in touch with your value system, you're right, it does get easier.

00:33:07.175 --> 00:33:10.403
But I mean we're talking decades of growth there.

00:33:11.285 --> 00:33:20.539
Well, sure, I mean, you know if, if enterprise has anything to say about it, nobody's mature enough until they're 26 to rent a vehicle, you know.

00:33:20.539 --> 00:33:24.415
So there's, there's definitely, and, like you said, the majority of your congregation is is over 30.

00:33:24.415 --> 00:33:27.201
And so you know there's, there's definitely, and, like you said, the majority of your congregation is is over 30.

00:33:27.201 --> 00:33:27.922
Yeah, and so you know there's.

00:33:27.922 --> 00:33:29.604
There's got to be a reason for that.

00:33:29.604 --> 00:33:33.250
It can't just be all coincidental because you've got just nostalgic games.

00:33:33.250 --> 00:33:39.616
You know, there's, uh, I think, a definite attribution there.

00:33:39.616 --> 00:33:46.028
But, to your point, because it gets easier, it doesn't make it the wrong decision every time, and I think that's also an important point of clarity, exactly for the reason you stated, though.

00:33:46.028 --> 00:33:55.230
But now my second question, then, identifying this let's call it honor code and your own sort of personal knighthood and outlook on life.

00:33:55.230 --> 00:34:01.780
My second question is then now, after the last 50 years of life, what are some of your values now, if anything's changed?

00:34:01.780 --> 00:34:04.384
What are some of your values now, if anything's changed?

00:34:05.404 --> 00:34:12.251
The army did a really good job of compartmentalizing a lot of values that resonate with me.

00:34:12.251 --> 00:34:40.197
But I'm of the mindset that when you take a value like an abstract philosophical concept that we're going to call a value, and you put it in its perfect form, it's the exact same thing as any other value in its perfect form, right, if you take perfect love as a value and you philosophically expound it to its perfection, it's an infinite perfect love.

00:34:40.197 --> 00:34:53.967
That is the exact same concept as perfect justice or perfect beauty or perfect any really good value in its perfection is all the same entity.

00:34:53.967 --> 00:34:56.215
It's the exact same concept that you're pursuing.

00:34:56.215 --> 00:35:06.436
It's just that in our civic human limitedness, you know, we've separated them out into manageable portions so that we could digest them and pursue them.

00:35:06.436 --> 00:35:17.719
But my idea is that if you're pursuing perfect value, no matter what you call the value, it's all sort of the same thing.

00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:33.445
And religions put a word to that, right, they all try to make sense of these very heady, abstract concepts, and that's sort of the tradition that I grew up in was that you're pursuing a perfection, an infinite perfection, and you can call it whatever you want.

00:35:33.875 --> 00:35:49.668
But going through the army, let me conceptualize that and put it into words, to easier to manipulate better, and that would be loyalty, duty, honor, respect, integrity and courage.

00:35:49.668 --> 00:35:57.679
Those were the big seven and of course, those have a lot of application to the military and, like you said, a combat zone.

00:35:57.679 --> 00:36:13.628
You're expected to behave in a certain way because certain things are on the line, but I find that they transcend just a military life and that they're really applicable to entrepreneurship or making a community, raising a family.

00:36:13.628 --> 00:36:26.967
All that kind of stuff is applicable and I think it comes down to the idea that perfect honor is the exact same thing as perfect integrity and perfect courage and perfect loyalty.

00:36:26.967 --> 00:36:29.400
All that stuff is almost the same thing.

00:36:29.400 --> 00:36:32.487
As you get closer and closer to the perfection of it.

00:36:33.175 --> 00:37:18.081
I find that when you live a virtuous Paraic the best life that you are trying to live, that you get a lot of animosity, a lot of people cannot keep up and they villainize you because you're trying to be the person with integrity and they just I don't know if they're projecting their own guilt or whatever, but living that type of lifestyle can really set you apart from the masses and put you in a lonely corner where you look around, you're like, wow, I don't have a lot of peers that seem to value the things that I value, and so, again, I think the lonely road can be kind of the good road and the good road can be lonely.

00:37:18.081 --> 00:37:30.764
But I think podcasts like yours are vital to open the eyes of a lot of people and say there is something more meaningful than surfing on the back of a dragon shooting lightning bolts.

00:37:31.085 --> 00:37:34.942
You have to be that's, that's debatable, for it that'd be pretty sweet too.

00:37:34.942 --> 00:38:02.967
But but yeah, you know, and and not for nothing, being able to this lonely road that you just talked about, being able to, I guess, even conceptualize, that takes a certain degree of growth and maturity, and I don't mean to say on a pedestal this is what you know in our case in this conversation that we've attained or that it's only people over a certain age demographic can attain, or any of these things.

00:38:02.967 --> 00:38:09.059
But it is difficult to conceptualize without some experiential learning and thought and growth.

00:38:09.059 --> 00:38:22.728
And so this lonely road that you brought up I didn't think about this until you just said it but I think directly parallels it's lonely at the top right, the alpha is a wolf of one, all these types of expressions.

00:38:22.728 --> 00:38:39.356
But I don't think it has to be from the same sort of, you know, business oriented application that I got in my bachelor's program of either stepping on the backs of little people to get there and build your success as a small business or entrepreneur or whatever.

00:38:39.356 --> 00:38:40.902
You know what have you large corporation?

00:38:40.902 --> 00:38:50.817
Or working with a bunch of people through profit share and actually building a community and working your way up where you're still the only one strategizing, because it's yours and you own it and whatever.

00:38:51.900 --> 00:38:56.855
I think more specific to this point, spiritually and I don't mean religious.

00:38:56.855 --> 00:39:00.846
I think there is a difference here, but in connotation for clarity, I don't mean religious.

00:39:00.846 --> 00:39:05.177
I think spiritually there has to be a certain amount of growth.

00:39:05.177 --> 00:39:28.534
That takes place and because everybody grows at different speeds and paces, based on backgrounds, perceptions, biases, exposures, impacts, influences, whatever, and interpretations of those things, everybody's going to feel lonely at some point because eventually you outgrow your tribe, you outgrow the group that you're with tribe.

00:39:28.534 --> 00:39:29.800
Yeah, I'll grow the group that you're with now.

00:39:29.800 --> 00:39:30.543
Maybe they catch up, maybe they don't.

00:39:30.543 --> 00:39:32.853
Uh, maybe they've moved a different direction than you and it's not about catching up, you just diverge.

00:39:32.853 --> 00:39:36.063
Could be any number of things similar to what you'd see in some of your games, I'm sure.

00:39:36.824 --> 00:39:58.211
But there has to be an aspect of loneliness in humanity and I'll tell you this in what are we going to call it 1995, let's say pre-Y2K, everybody's sitting there and everybody's lonely together, at every single bus stop, every single train station, because there was no phone, there was no distraction, there was no nothing.

00:39:58.211 --> 00:40:06.009
We were all individually waiting in our own heads, individually, lonely, not communicating because we didn't know how or any other number of things?

00:40:06.009 --> 00:40:06.737
Is she going to call?

00:40:06.737 --> 00:40:07.519
Is she going to show up?

00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:08.623
Is this going to arrive on time?

00:40:08.623 --> 00:40:13.204
Whatever, building our own anxieties Right, but in that moment we're alone.

00:40:13.204 --> 00:40:16.257
Yeah, agreed, we don't have that now.

00:40:16.257 --> 00:40:19.427
I don't think as often because we have cell phones.

00:40:19.427 --> 00:40:25.159
We have ways to distract and deviate from that loneliness, but in those moments that's where the growth happens.

00:40:25.159 --> 00:40:25.358
Yeah.

00:40:26.842 --> 00:40:29.351
All right, folks sit tight, We'll be right back on Transacting Value.

00:40:29.351 --> 00:41:19.701
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00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:38.190
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00:40:38.190 --> 00:40:46.594
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00:40:46.594 --> 00:40:55.867
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00:40:55.867 --> 00:41:06.034
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00:41:30.822 --> 00:41:31.764
We don't have that now.

00:41:31.764 --> 00:41:34.952
I don't think as often because we have cell phones.

00:41:34.952 --> 00:41:38.039
We have ways to distract and deviate from that loneliness.

00:41:38.039 --> 00:41:40.668
But in those moments that's where the growth happens.

00:41:41.460 --> 00:41:57.413
I think that's one of the reasons why Night W Nightwatch Games is as successful as it is is because we give that setting for those people to congregate, to make those connections that one technology can distract us from.

00:41:57.413 --> 00:42:06.992
But it gives us a setting where there's a shared interest as your baseboard and then you start connecting on deeper levels once you have that shared interest.

00:42:06.992 --> 00:42:17.614
And we find that a lot of profound things happen in Night W Nightwatch games that totally transcend the games themselves or even buying games.

00:42:17.614 --> 00:42:34.583
We're obviously a retail store that's really how we pay the rent but the things that happen at Night W Nightwatch games show that people they're on their individual paths, paths and people are at different rates and different positions and all that kind of stuff.

00:42:34.583 --> 00:42:44.088
But there's an intrinsic desire to help other people walk their path as well, knowing that it helps you walk your path.

00:42:44.829 --> 00:42:54.831
And some of the things that have happened at night watch games that transcend the retail are things like birthday parties that's an easy one Bachelorette parties.

00:42:54.831 --> 00:42:59.262
Bachelor parties we had a guy come in and celebrate his divorce.

00:42:59.262 --> 00:43:06.922
We've had six different customers get on their knee and propose to their spouse in the store.

00:43:06.922 --> 00:43:13.101
That's a significant event and they wanted to do it in that setting where they felt empowered.

00:43:13.101 --> 00:43:36.045
We did three weddings in the store and to bring that whole life cycle full circle, we've also done two memorials where two of our customers have died One was a suicide and the other one was a COVID casualty but the family said we want to celebrate their life at the place.

00:43:36.045 --> 00:43:39.132
They were happiest and that was Night W Nightwatch Games.

00:43:39.132 --> 00:43:39.132
Brenda

00:43:39.739 --> 00:43:44.429
And so Night W Nightwatch Games is not your typical setting of a retail outlet.

00:43:44.429 --> 00:43:47.784
It's not even a typical gaming cafe.

00:43:47.784 --> 00:44:01.822
There's a deep seated support structure to the community at a place like Night W Nightwatch Games, and I think it's there because they got the message from Brenda and I when we made the space.

00:44:01.822 --> 00:44:12.391
We're saying we're making a space for you and we understand your identity and we're going to make a space where you feel legitimate and you feel Michael empowered Cera and you feel encouraged and you feel connected.

00:44:12.391 --> 00:44:24.586
And then, as those people came in, they started doing the same thing with each other and then this magic of connection happened that totally transcended anything that we expected.

00:44:24.586 --> 00:44:37.512
It's pretty amazing, and so there's a lot of lessons that one, brenda and I, can pass on as older people in the community, but there's tons of lessons that we're learning from the rest of them as well.

00:44:37.512 --> 00:44:40.668
So in that regard, it's not lonely at all.

00:44:40.668 --> 00:44:45.092
I am saturated with other people walking their paths, so that's kind of cool.

00:44:46.181 --> 00:44:54.514
Well, it's, it's, at least in my opinion, the point of this entire human condition is to learn how to grow through life separately, together.

00:44:54.514 --> 00:44:58.891
Yeah, and, and I think it, it changes everything.

00:44:58.891 --> 00:45:07.614
You know my opinion, I guess, towards live action role play is solely predicated.

00:45:07.614 --> 00:45:10.025
It was, it was a comedy movie.

00:45:10.025 --> 00:45:17.070
The two guys tried to adopt these kids and then one of them was in a larping I can't remember michael cera or somebody was in it.

00:45:17.070 --> 00:45:24.713
Yeah, yeah, um, well, anyway, whatever that movie was right, that, along with the uh, what do they call it?

00:45:25.141 --> 00:45:29.409
society of creative anachronism creative anachronism.

00:45:29.469 --> 00:45:57.137
Yep, I've got a buddy who I don't know what the word is, partakes, yeah, but you know, yeah, participates, I guess, yeah, and he's, he's created all of these relationships, networking with people through this organization from all over the country here in the us that are whatever running a particular guild, or they're a prince in this particular region, or whatever it is, when, in reality, they're a doctor in this particular region, or whatever it is when, in reality, they're a doctor at home yeah, have you ever played a military simulation airsoft game?

00:45:57.882 --> 00:45:59.565
have you ever done that in general?

00:45:59.565 --> 00:46:01.268
Yeah, just like, have you?

00:46:01.268 --> 00:46:03.012
Have you ever suited up in your rig?

00:46:03.681 --> 00:46:10.967
uh, but you're shooting airsoft bbs at each other yeah, they're, or or digital versions yeah, we've had all sorts of digital simulations too.

00:46:12.342 --> 00:46:15.871
They would say that's the exact same thing as a live action role playing.

00:46:15.871 --> 00:46:29.094
You're just role playing as a soldier and you're put into a situation where there's no real deadly consequences to the decisions, but you get to enact those decisions and see what happens.

00:46:29.094 --> 00:46:30.480
You get to enact those decisions and see what happens.

00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:32.382
We do a lot of that over here as well.

00:46:32.382 --> 00:46:42.789
We suit up in full battle, rattle and run around and shoot each other with our mock M4s and you know, shoot, move and communicate, and it's really just role playing all over again.

00:46:42.789 --> 00:46:44.967
It's just a safe place to do it.

00:46:45.940 --> 00:46:47.847
Absolutely, that's exactly what I was thinking about.

00:46:47.847 --> 00:46:50.181
I was in the theater department when I was in college.

00:46:50.181 --> 00:46:51.264
Absolutely, that's exactly what I was thinking about.

00:46:51.264 --> 00:46:55.248
I was in the theater department when I was in college and, as much as my heart said, I can totally nail this solo and musical theater.

00:46:55.248 --> 00:47:00.914
I became a set designer because I was wrong, but working in the theater department is the exact same thing.

00:47:00.914 --> 00:47:27.590
The difference is now there's a set, now there's a controlled environment, whereas what more colloquially recently has become LARPing, there's not You're just out places, but it's a larger, more immersive set which is still assuming these roles, building these character arcs, more specifically, designing these characters as people to build resonance with an audience, and I think there's a very high parallel there.

00:47:27.590 --> 00:47:28.623
And then you move into.

00:47:28.623 --> 00:47:32.481
You know movies, actors and actresses do the exact same thing.

00:47:32.481 --> 00:47:34.126
It's just digitized on a video.

00:47:34.567 --> 00:47:40.186
Yeah sure, it's all character portrayal and I think that's something that gets overlooked.

00:47:40.186 --> 00:47:46.427
Is the nuance, detail and depth of the word character, where it's an individual in a plot line.

00:47:46.427 --> 00:47:55.525
Yeah, sure, maybe as a noun that connotation, but I choose to believe that connotation is actually the depth and resonance of the individual.

00:47:55.525 --> 00:48:00.943
That character is more the attribution within a story, a play, a game or whatever.

00:48:00.943 --> 00:48:01.324
Have you?

00:48:01.865 --> 00:48:05.494
yeah, that character is a summation of their value system.

00:48:05.494 --> 00:48:08.447
Exactly that's really what the character is all about.

00:48:08.568 --> 00:48:31.492
Is what that's what is their values and that's what we want to explore and read about and see and yeah, because, don't get me wrong, I appreciate, for example, what Marvel's been doing broadening out the individual ethnicities and backgrounds and aspects of the people portraying these roles and then, you know, by proxy, bringing in those characters from different comic books or Stan Lee or whatever, into their movies.

00:48:31.492 --> 00:49:05.809
Because there is a higher reliance Now this is my working theory there's a higher reliance now worldwide on superficial resonance and so what I see and how I view the world materialistically or from a consumer perspective, is how I see like-minded groups, organizations, people, as opposed to how I see people act and talk and they're bearing their demeanor, their character, is how I find like-minded groups, even though we all look different, act different, have different orientations, whatever.

00:49:05.809 --> 00:49:09.465
And I think there's a misconception there when how that divide or merger is explained and expressed.

00:49:09.465 --> 00:49:13.077
I think there's a misconception there when how that divide or merger is explained and expressed.

00:49:13.077 --> 00:49:26.224
I think there's a miscommunication there where I'm not saying we have to accept everybody because to one reason or another you can't, logistically, maybe not possible In a particular society.

00:49:26.224 --> 00:49:31.987
You know you've got to have boundaries, otherwise the congregation dissipates.

00:49:31.987 --> 00:49:34.682
You know the sense, identity disappears.

00:49:34.682 --> 00:49:44.179
You've got to have boundaries and you know borders and not to get political, but like that, there has to be some sort of rule and structure to any organization or gameplay or whatever.

00:49:44.882 --> 00:50:02.150
But in that I think the difference is the superficiality of that bond can change and can move and can migrate, and for the same reason that Lord of the Rings didn't just stay in the Shire and then they brought everybody else with them as they went, you know where.

00:50:02.150 --> 00:50:08.460
What they had in common was the quest in that case, and a few other traits, but they certainly didn't have all the same attributes.

00:50:08.460 --> 00:50:13.262
Gandalf, I'm pretty sure, is like seven feet tall, so good luck, you know.

00:50:13.262 --> 00:50:15.744
And nobody else was 800 years old.

00:50:15.744 --> 00:50:32.431
So there's that and what comes up in my newsfeed or on the TV where, let's say, cops are doing this thing in this particular city.

00:50:33.132 --> 00:50:35.393
Or I saw one the other day.

00:50:35.393 --> 00:50:47.978
This tourist went down to South America oh no, the Caribbean was on a cruise and he had some CBD oil or four rounds of ammunition, four shells that were in his pistol casings I think it was nine mil that were in his bag.

00:50:47.978 --> 00:50:48.960
That's what it was.

00:50:48.960 --> 00:50:51.181
He was in the Caribbean and he was on his way back and he got caught.

00:50:51.181 --> 00:50:53.222
Now he's facing 12 years, wow.

00:50:53.222 --> 00:50:55.364
And he said I didn't know they were there.

00:50:55.364 --> 00:50:59.847
What do you want me to do Like, on one hand, debating how that you know?

00:51:00.086 --> 00:51:13.755
Okay, sure News covered was his story and the grieving wife and the family that won't see the dad and the stuff that gets ratings.

00:51:13.755 --> 00:51:16.217
But in my opinion it's superficial.

00:51:16.217 --> 00:51:38.956
And what isn't, or at least what wasn't covered in that particular story was, if you don't want this to happen, on one hand, go to the Department of State website and you can see all of the travel regulations for every country that we have some sort of alliance or some sort of friendly relationship with, but you can and can't bring embassy contacts, all these other things, before you go on your trip and then make your own decisions.

00:51:38.956 --> 00:51:44.387
On a superficial side, but then a deeper sort of character portrayal.

00:51:44.387 --> 00:51:52.380
What wasn't covered in that news story, for example, was what are you doing with empty shell casings when you're going scuba diving?

00:51:52.380 --> 00:52:01.271
Why would you go to another place and bring in foreign objects into their village when that kingdom, for example, is is going to confiscate it?

00:52:01.893 --> 00:52:13.945
you know what I mean like there's a certain level of respect for where you're going that you got to adhere to, and if you don't, because of your own ego or something else, well, and you know once Paraic start losing humility.

00:52:13.945 --> 00:52:16.309
Paraic I think there's problems, virtues and vices.

00:52:16.309 --> 00:52:18.534
Right, we talked about Catholicism earlier.

00:52:18.534 --> 00:52:19.315
Yeah, I think there's.

00:52:19.315 --> 00:52:25.460
There's some truth to that as well.

00:52:25.460 --> 00:52:27.202
For the sake of time, though, I really only have two more questions for you.

00:52:27.202 --> 00:52:38.576
So, all of this being said, all your experiences in gameplay or in life, in your store and your marriage however you want to attribute this what impact has all of this actually had on your sense of self and self-worth?

00:52:44.503 --> 00:53:03.067
A very profound impact and share a common understanding that I've developed with other people, not only to teach them what I've learned but to learn from them as well, and it just gives me a context of how does PORIC become the best PORIC possible.

00:53:04.047 --> 00:53:22.471
And so if you're not pursuing that kind of idea, you can really get lost in the mechanizations of society and your nine to five job and paying taxes and dealing with bosses and family and all that kind of stuff and those are distractors really to, I think, the real purpose.

00:53:23.340 --> 00:53:33.635
And so pursuing values and pursuing a value laden life really gives me purpose on the most profound level.

00:53:33.635 --> 00:53:38.510
And so I never get out of bed scratching my head going what am I doing?

00:53:38.510 --> 00:53:39.572
Why am I doing this?

00:53:39.572 --> 00:54:01.882
I have those answers Paraic and while those answers might change as I become older and maybe hopefully more wiser, I still have a working context of what am I doing, and so I don't really get lost in some of the superficial pieces of the media or keeping up with the Joneses or those kinds of things.

00:54:01.882 --> 00:54:16.731
Running a business, you could easily get lost in profit margins and trying to make as much money as you can, but I found that I'm able to keep that very clear and remember that I'm here for that community.

00:54:16.731 --> 00:54:29.952
I'm dedicating my time and energy to make other people happy, and that gives me a lot of purpose, and my marriage and family life seems to be falling along as well.

00:54:31.023 --> 00:54:38.311
Yeah, you, you know it's interesting the closer we get to ourselves, the easier it is to get closer to other people.

00:54:38.311 --> 00:54:44.152
Yeah and uh, it's a odd sort of phenomenon, I think, how it works.

00:54:44.152 --> 00:54:51.344
But uh, you know, bork, I again appreciate this opportunity to talk and just dive into your perspective a little bit.

00:54:51.344 --> 00:55:00.175
Your business, obviously, but what it's done for you as a person and what it can do for other people, not just in the gameplay but to instigate their own senses of self.

00:55:00.175 --> 00:55:03.027
So I really appreciate your perspective, man, thanks for coming on, thank you.

00:55:03.329 --> 00:55:03.990
Thank you very much.

00:55:03.990 --> 00:55:06.045
It was nice sharing that.

00:55:06.686 --> 00:55:07.108
Yeah, it was.

00:55:07.108 --> 00:55:16.885
It was good and I guess, that being said, my final question, then, is if people want to get in touch with you, find out more about Night W Nightwatch Games, your podcast, anything, how do people do it?

00:55:18.925 --> 00:55:35.793
Where do they go, and that will give you a good idea of who we are and why we're doing what we're doing, and it also gives you a lot of contacts links between you and me and Brenda.

00:55:35.793 --> 00:55:37.815
We have an Instagram.

00:55:37.815 --> 00:55:43.197
You can find us at Night W Nightwatch Game on Instagram, and I think game is San singular Antonio on Instagram.

00:55:43.197 --> 00:55:44.637
We ran out of letters, I think.

00:55:44.637 --> 00:55:52.315
And then we also have our YouTube channel, which The the night watch games podcast.

00:55:52.315 --> 00:55:55.070
Uh, and then there's a youtube channel of night watch games on youtube.

00:55:55.472 --> 00:55:58.983
So there's a lot of ways that you could sort of reach out to us and connect with us.

00:55:58.983 --> 00:56:01.230
Uh, we would love to see you come by the store.

00:56:01.230 --> 00:56:08.012
You know we're we're definitely a people kind of place where face-to-face interaction has a lot of value for us.

00:56:08.012 --> 00:56:17.652
Paraic So if you ever find yourself in san antonio, we are located on the north side, 16350 Blanco Road, suite 116.

00:56:17.652 --> 00:56:21.684
And then our sister store, the Sanctuary, is 117.

00:56:21.684 --> 00:56:28.449
So we're right Paraic door to each other and if you come in, ask for Brenda and I and introduce yourself, we'd love to meet you.

00:56:28.449 --> 00:56:47.860
Absolutely, and for anybody who's new to Transacting Value, depending on the player you're streaming this conversation on, if you click see more, or if you click TransactingValuePodcast@ there's a dropdown description of show notes for this conversation and in there you'll be able to find links for Oric and Night W Nightwatch Games on social and YouTube and for the podcast and for his website as well.

00:56:47.860 --> 00:56:52.184
So if that's easier for you to direct you, you can find those links there also.

00:56:52.184 --> 00:57:02.309
Again, porek, I appreciate your time, man, I appreciate the conversation, your insight and your ability to communicate it effectively, which obviously for an audio podcast, is huge.

00:57:02.309 --> 00:57:04.731
So thanks again, very welcome.

00:57:04.731 --> 00:57:05.612
This was great.

00:57:05.612 --> 00:57:09.934
I love the opportunity and so thank you for your time to everybody listening.

00:57:09.934 --> 00:57:13.356
I want to thank you guys for tuning in New listeners.

00:57:13.356 --> 00:57:48.188
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00:57:15.757 --> 00:57:16.057
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00:57:16.057 --> 00:57:53.335
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