Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Roleplaying Games

1. Whatever you try, there is always at least a 1% chance that you will succeed and at least a 1% chance that you will fail.
2. Never split the party. Any time any of your friends needs to go anywhere, you should all go with him.
3. The farther underground an animal lives, the harder it is to kill.
4. All buildings, rooms and hallways have dimensions that are even multiples of ten feet.
5. At least once in your life you will have an experience which is a thinly veiled homage or parody of a well-known movie or book. Utilizing your knowledge of the source material (i.e. doing exactly what the protagonist of the book did -- or should have done) works about half the time.
6. Levers are meant to be pulled. The same goes for switches, buttons, bell-pulls and the like.
7. At least one of your closest friends will have a name that is an outrageous pun.
8. Any time you enter a room or building for the first time, examine it carefully for secret doors and traps. If you don't find any, you're not looking hard enough.
9. The more specific a piece of information is, the more likely it is to be useful. No one would bother to give you incredibly detailed information unless they knew you were going to need it. General information and things that "everybody knows" are just background material.
10. You can describe anyone's entire personality in no more than two words.
11. The harder something is to kill, the more treasure it has. Or, in general, the harder a task is, the greater the reward you'll get once you accomplish it.
12. Every important event in your life starts with meeting someone in a bar.
13. Anyone who hires you for an apparently routine or mundane job is undoubtedly up to something.
14. Be careful what you wish for; you might get it. But it's more likely that you'll get royally hosed in a way that's sort of consistent with a very tortured interpretation of the exact wording of your wish.
15. However complex or widespread a problem is, it can all be resolved with a big fight.
16. Whenever an old friend you haven't seen in years or a long-lost relative shows up, that person will either be killed or turn out to be evil, usually within a matter of days.
17. The boss is always better at everything -- especially combat -- than anyone who works for him.
18. Prophecies always come true. That's what makes them prophecies, and not just something somebody said one time.
19. Always carry as many of your possessions with you as you reasonably can. Bearing in mind, of course, that on a given day you'll generally find a lot of metal coins and other heavy objects that you'll want to take with you as well.
20. If you ever have to fight an exact double of yourself, the "real you" will win 80% of the time.

© 1999 Steven Howard.